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So I drug myself out of bed early and made it up to the Wild Animal Park right about when they opened. Really a nice day up there, and I got to see all kinds of neat critters, like this lion. All that stood between us was a piece of plexiglass. How cool is that?

This is Ivan the giraffe, who walked right up to the tour tram.

And, look! Here's my long-lost sable antelope hanging out on the hill in an "alert circle," that is, purposely facing different directions to watch out for danger. They seem to have settled in nicely. This is a gigantic exhibit with about a dozen species in there. It's pretty neat.

But the highlight of my day was finally getting to see the cheetahs, my favoritest animals, who weren't on exhibit last time. What's even neater is that these are three of the four girls that were being hand-raised at the zoo a couple years ago, so I got to see them when they were small. The only pics of them then are on my old cell phone because I didn't have my camera yet. The fourth is elsewhere, because she was freaked out by the big balloon that takes people up into the air nearby.

And here's Majani, the largest cheetah on exhibit in a zoo at 144 lbs. He's an animal ambassador, and you can see the dog, Clifford, under his tummy in the picture. Clifford is his friend and keeps him calm. Other zoo animals have buddies, too, like the wolves at the zoo.