West Midlands Safari Park

Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.

Part of me wants to visit, but part of me would prefer to see them like this. I think that kind of holds me back.

I do know though, that these places are part of saving species, which is extremely important.

We visited Bristol Zoo years ago and I was talking to a keeper about the discomfort of seeing animals penned like that, they agreed but she kindly showed us a lot of the work they were doing on conservation, how some would be bred and then sent back to the wild. They had a huge bug breeding programme too, to repopulate a necessary species.

They also had tree acts who escaped regularly and built nests everywhere. That was funny to watch. “Don’t look the humans in the eye Hector, they will only try to entrap us again!” Keep moving forward.” That’s how it looked, that we were being collected ignored in favour of the stronger will.

At London Zoo they told me that they were able to rotate some species between them and Whipsnade Zoo to give the animals space.

It’s a metaphor for life really, unaware people of the past thought it would be lovely for those in the West to see these animals close up, and it is. It’s a privilege. It’s also all wrong, yet it’s been turned round to create a positive.

It’s good when you can do that.

Deb 💖💖💖