Sharkarosa Ranch

I went perusing on Craigslist.com this morning for a fun new activity for the kids and I to do today and I found an exotic animal ranch about an hour north of our place that I thought may be a bit of fun to spend a few hours at. It's in an obscure part of the country side that mapquest didn't know how to get to, so I used their ... interesting set of instructions. I forgot how country people give directions here in Texas.
We got there just after noon, I was a little unimpressed with how much I had to pay ($16 for Ms. R and I, B-Man was free) considering on their web site they talked about the place being run on donations - but in the long run, I guess it was worth the cost. They had an interesting set of animals: Ring tailed Lemurs, various small species of small monkeys, wallaby's,albino kangarooscamelsllamas, zebrasa few breeds of large dogs, Clyde's dales miniature horsesdeer ... and you were allowed to pet/handle all of them.
I fell in love with the lemur. One of the animals handlers was wandering around letting people pet it when it all of the sudden leaped onto my shoulders and wrapped itself around my neck and seemed quite content to just stay there. Ms. R was THRILLED, she thought it's almost two foot ringed tail was completely fascinating as it wrapped itself round and round her arm. B-Man was fine as long as he was able to stay near the back end of it. Very soft fur - even softer than a cat, and it's paws are made up of skin that feel as soft as a babies.A bit later as B-Man was cozying up to a monkey named Michelle, he grabbed towards her mouth. As tame as they may be, that still makes me nervous. So I reached over to stop his hand from making contact with her mouth and SHE jumped into my arms. What is it with tamed exotic animals? It was kind of cool, more nerve wracking ... I kept a careful eye on her, afraid she'd decide that I wasn't her type of person and bite me.
As we were watching another monkey leap around it's cage it came down to our level and started reaching out towards Ms. R's bag with it's hands, couldn't quite grab it so it shimmied over a bit and started using it's TAIL to reach out. It managed to wrap it's tail around her bag and tried to pull into his cage, she couldn't stop giggling. "Stop, you silly monkey!" B-Man mean while was shrieking with excitement and fear, as usual. With all there was to see and touch there Ms. R's favorite part was the "tractor" ride - next time I think I'll just take her to a kiddy amusement park.
And B-Man's favorite "feature" was the sink - good thing springs here and the pools are opening back up.