I few weeks ago, I told you of my adventure at the Exotic Feline Animal Rescue Center.  That was just a taste.  See people, I am a dirty Blog Tease.  Here is the story in its entirety.

**Note: Behind the cut are some graphic images. (Discovery-Channel-Graphic)
**Note II: Thanks to Jeezikah for the pictures! :)

Annie and Jess pick me up, and after picking up our friend Becky, we head into the middle of nowhere (have you ever passed through Bowling Green, Indiana?  No, you haven’t.  And you don’t want to) on a mission to see some big cats.  After about forty-five minutes, the directions lead us down this long, shady dirt road.

Nervously laughing, we are all looking out the windows for some sign of this place, but all we see as we roll along are trees…trees…trees…PILE OF DEAD DEER…trees…trees…
“Wait…do you think that was it?”  someone said.  The rest of us were shreiking in disgust.  We pulled the car over to the side of road and sheepishly stepped out, each one of us saying, in some way or another, “What are we getting ourselves into?”

We step up to the entrance of the Exotic Feline Rescue Center, where they are NOT fucking around.  There, a few yards beyond the gate, is a pile of dead animals.  I won’t go into details.  But growing up in West Michigan Suburbia, you just don’t see a dead cow hung up and ready for skinning every day, now, eh?  (I will not go into the smell, as it cannot be captured in words.)  We are greeted by a EFRC volunteer.  She is smiling cheerily, and looks like your standard young midwestern mom, except that she has on rubber gloves with blood all over them.  “Are you all over 18?”  she asks?  [Um, yes? This place is fucking crazy!] She takes our ten dollars and explains that we came at a good time – the animals have just been fed, and because the weather is nice, they will be more active.  She goes on to advise us that there are only two rules:

1) Stay three feet away from the fence.
2) If you see an animal turn away from you and stick its tail up, it is going to spray you.  So move.

(Here is a wide angle picture I got from their website, so you can get an idea of how close “three feet” actually is)

Sweet!

The lady begins the tour with some history about the center, but I am unable to hear her because all I can think of is, “Holy Shit. That’s a COUGAR, like, RIGHT THERE.”

At a typical zoo, you always feel a big sense of detachment from the animal, if they are out at all.  They are usually way in the background — not close enough for them to pee on you.  At the EFRC, the animals look at you, at it’s a really amazing feeling. Apparently, there are over 170 large cats — including lions, tigers, bobcats, and leopards.  And all the dead stuff we saw at the entrance?  Part of the 2,000 POUNDS of meat these guys eat every single day. [That's more than a frat house!] She points to another volunteer feeding some young, jumping leopards at a cage nearby.  “Did you guys hear about the guy in New York who chained his wife up in his basement and left her to die with two leopards in his house?…Yeah. I don’t know what happened to the wife…but we got the leopards.” Whoa.  Turns out, these types of stories are not unusual for the EFRC.   Most of the animals have been seized from sicko owners who think they can have these things as pets, or from really creepy circuses where they were abused and malnourished.

I am still reeling with excitement (combined with fear of being peed on) when she takes us into a portion of the center that is behind lockdown.  “Tigers like to spray, so watch it,” she warns.  (Great. I am SO getting peed on.)  Suddenly there is only a few feet and one chainlength fence from us and a giant lounging tiger.  Our mouths drop in amazement, and the lady chirps at it as if it were merely a housecat.

Next were some lions who surprised the center a few years back by producing an offspring.

From Left to Right, you see Mama Lion, Teen Lion, and Papa Lion.
You can also see the chain length fence we were standing just a few feet away from.  The woman walked up to the Teenage Lion and began baby-talking to it.  She put her hand up to the fence and it began to affectionately rub against her.  Suddenly the lion began to bite at the womans rubber gloves (probably tipped off by the BLOOD on them, Lady?) She struggled to pull away, but by this time the lion had a hold of her coat sleeve and more she pulled, the more it pulled back.  It happened so fast that I was struck with a total FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT dilemma.  Do I grab onto this woman and pull, so as to save her from having her hand bitten off? Or do I run?

You bet your ass I fucking ran.  And I hid behind Annie, because obviously SHE would protect me from that mean ol’ lion, should it come tearing through that fence.  With one big yank, the woman pulled back with her hand fully in tact, and the lion had a nice piece of her coat to munch on.  But the fright fest wasn’t finished! Big Daddy Lion got all mad and ROARED at the lady.  Now, you’ve all heard lions roar in movies.  It is NOTHING compared to the earth-shattering, gutteral noise that a lion makes when it is furious and it is a few yards away from you.  I think I saw her hair blow back.  And I peed my pants. (Mind you, this happened within the first, oh, TEN MINUTES of our visit.) “THAT’S never happened before,” she said, laughing nervously.  “I was so worried that she was going to eat my rubber gloves and get sick, and then I’d get in trouble.”  (Oh, really? Because we were worrying that we’d have to take you back up front with your stub of an arm!)  She goes on to talk about a really cool white tiger nearby but we all fear turning our backs on the riled up Lion Teen, who is getting anxious.

It jumped down from its perch and followed us really closely as we scampered out.

Here is another tiger.  I think this one might have killed its owner in Las Vegas, but it seemed to like the Lady okay.

Then the Lady basically told us that were were on our own.  She gave us directions around the park and simply said, “Don’t touch the animals.”  Got it.

Some highlights:

Tons of Tigers!

Dead leg! (looks like a goat leg, maybe?)
There are dead animal parts strewn ALL around this place.  It’s so fucking disgusting, and by disgusting, I mean so fucking cool.

LION!

Coogz!

“Mmm. I am so tired from eating this cow leg.”

Awww…

Here is the picture to accompany the “I saw a tiger eating a dead cow head!” story that I told EVERYBODY I ran into the week after our visit.

This lion was also feasting on Dead Cow Head when another male lion approached its cage.  It pounced toward the other lion and roared viciously.  I sprinted from the cage and peed my pants, again.  (Turns out, the only one I had to worry about peeing on me? ME!)

One of the best highlights by far was when one of the lions would start roaring.  A few times during our visit, one lion’s roar would trigger all the other lions in the park to roar, kind of like dogs in a neighborhood (except it’s fucking LIONS!).  It’s a chorus that is hard to describe, and one that I will never forget.

The tour took us in a circle, so the end of it brings you back to the entrance.  In the time that we had been in the park, a new meat source had come in: a huge dead cow.  Just, you know, lyin’ there, all stiff with riga-mortis.  “If you want a newsletter, they are right up there at that booth,” one of the volunteers said, pointing past the bloated bovine.  I knew they were testing me: They were rugged cow-butchering volunteers and we were clean-cut college girls. In order to get their damn newsletter I walked up the Path of Freaky Shit, with a dead cow to my left and a feisty cage of leopards to my right.  I had officially survived the Exotic Feline Rescue Center.

That said, it was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had.  Let me know if you want to go… I’d go back in a heartbeat.