Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch is a fun little drive through park that allows people to feed a variety of animals from the comfort of their car. Think safari, but less scary animals. We got to see deer, antelope, gazelles, long horns, goats, zebras, emu, ostriches, etc. It was a neat experience, kind of.
Before I went, I had been warned that the ostriches are a bit forward and will poke their heads into your car looking for food. I was told to make sure we kept our windows up to avoid having to convince a giant bird to remove its head from our car.
So we got to the park in the morning and the trail starts you off with some very disinterested deer and other varieties of grazing animals. We had a blast. They came pretty close to our car and we got some good pictures. They were very polite and would wait a few feet from your car for you to drop food on the ground for them. Lauren would never have been able to see some of these animals this close if not for this place.
As we are driving through we enter a section of the park called "Kenya." Lauren was so excited at the thought of seeing a real zebra up close. She was sitting on Brian's lap helping him drive and Nathan was in my lap trying desperately to eat some of the animal food. (I can't tell you how many times I had to pull the bag of food out of his mouth. He's sneaky at getting it.)
So right as we cross over the cattle guard into the Kenya section I see the car in front of us stop and an ostrich walk up to their car for food. They clearly have their windows up because it quickly looses interest in their car and begins to walk towards our. Laughing I say "Here it comes, let's get the windows up."
And that is when the horror began. I casually reached over and pulled the window switch... and the window would not roll up. At this point the bird is making a beeline for my open window. So I pull it several more times (obviously I hadn't done it right the first time) and it still won't roll up. So I start shouting "Brian, the window, the window." So Brian then tries to roll the window up from his set of controls. By this point the ostrich is at our car and is pecking around the outside of the open window. I start to panic and start screaming "The window, the window." The ostrich must have thought I was inviting him in, because in came his head right for Nathan. So now, I'm trying to climb over the center console and into Brian's lap with Lauren, I'm screaming, Nathan's crying, Lauren's screaming, Brian's screaming and shouting, the ostrich is pecking around the inside of the car. I'm sure everyone in the cars around us could hear us. Brian finally realizes that he had put the window lock on back at the beginning of the park, so he clicks the lock off and starts to roll up the window. Except now the bird's damn head is in the car and Brian doesn't want to hurt it. So he stops rolling the window up which send me into another fit of shouting and screaming and trying to get Nathan away from it. Brian finally gets the window close enough to the bird's neck that it pulls it's head. We get the window up and kick it into gear and get the heck away from it. Once we are away from it, we laugh. I wish I had a video of what we looked liked. I'm sure it was hilarious. All of us screaming and crying and shouting and me and Nathan practically in Brian's lap. It was awful. :)
I wish that was the end of my tail... after we drive away from the attacking ostrich, we come across the zebras. Lauren is thrilled. We roll our windows back down and start tossing food out to them. Apparently zebras are just as aggressive as ostrich, because within a split second, I have a giant zebra head in my window which kicked off the second round of screaming and frantically trying to get the window rolled up. Luckily the window locks were not one this time and we were able to get the window up before anyone was bitten. (Seriously, they both went after Nathan's legs. Clearly the delicious rolls he has all over his body are tempting to wild animals.)
After we get away from the zebras we think we are nearing the exit, we come across the rest of the ostrich. Obviously the first one was just a scout for the rest of them, because we rounded a bend and there had to be 15 - 20 of them. Lauren starts screaming again and thrashing about trying the get away from them. This time the windows were so I got a good picture. You can't say this wouldn't scare the crap out of you...
It was pecking my window! Anyway, needless to say, Lauren cried the whole time through the second time around. You may be asking yourself, why would you go through it a second time? Well, we still had three bags of food, and we really wanted to see the ostrich and zebras attack some other unsuspecting car. :)
I highly recommend visiting this place. It was so neat. Just keep your windows up when you enter the Kenya section. :) Here are a few more pictures of the nicer animals.
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