Exotic Animals, Travel and You: Be Careful What You Ask For

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsp

Hugging Pumbaa is a very bad idea

We need to stay hands-off when it comes to wild animals. That I even need to say that, sometimes I am just gobsmacked. Let’s talk.

By way of confession, I’ve done a lot of work with very large, often exotic animals in the world. While I am not a professional, I have a skill for it. I grew up with large animals, don’t fear them but I sure as hell respect them as individual personalities with boundaries and the right to say no to me in no uncertain terms.

For what I do with animals, there are a few rules which are intractable.

For any animal I work on:

-They’re not completely wild, under any circumstance

-They've been handled by humans for years

-I always check with the handler first for permission, have them standing by while I interact and work with their animal

- First I find out what the animal likes, doesn’t like, what scares them, if treats are allowed, and make sure I play by the rules

-I watch body language. The second the animal’s body language changes towards rejection, I move away slowly

-If the animal decides they don’t like me, I leave. When the animal decides we’re done, we’re done

These rules have allowed me to work on some pretty incredible creatures.

I’ve worked on tigers, monkeys, cheetahs, elephants, horses, donkeys, rhinos, untold dogs, camels. And probably a few more I’ve forgotten. A few men, I think but it's been a while. I’ve calmed horses rescued from kill pens and worked on camels which have been beaten by their Maasai owners, who ended up kissing me with great gentility. The camels, not the owners, that is.

I do not recommend this to anyone who is not completely at ease with large creatures. I do not recommend this if you’re not willing to take the risk that said animal may choose suddenly to not like you. It happens.

We don’t get to blame the animal, either. They’re not required to like us one damned bit. This isn’t a petting zoo nor is it Disney World where the hippos wear tutus and talk.

I’ve done some journalism work in Thailand looking into some of the so-called elephant “sanctuaries.” Most are absolutely no such thing, only one of all the places I visited qualified. I’ve also looked into the big cat facilities there.

While the operators aren’t going to tell you everything, the Thai government is sensitive to international criticism. They have shut down some of the big facilities which were little more than factory farms for Chinese tiger parts purchasers.

Some of those outfits do a pretty good job and other countries send rescue animals there. These two bachelor brothers came from South Africa.

Cheetah kiss after a half hour of massage

I’ve never been bitten, kicked, or attacked. Once I got gently whacked when a very happy cheetah’s face was being tickled by my braid. He swatted at the source with a closed paw, clipped my ear, and kept right on purring as though nothing happened.

I continued to work on his head. I bled, he kept purring, and the attendant got me a paper towel. I still have that shirt with the blood stains, as few would believe me.

If he’d been really pissed, I wouldn’t have a face. If I’d have leapt up screaming, I wouldn't have a life, either.

While I realize that there is that one day when something could go wrong, I have very crisp limits on what I’m willing to risk. For example, while it sounds so very cool to be able to work on a farm with exotic animals, they are exotic. They are wild even if you raise them from infancy.

As a result they’re unpredictable. Start thinking they’re no different from the family dog and your best friend, you could end up like this guy in Texas.

After raising the warthog from birth, the guy assumed this huge, incredibly dangerous creature was his bestie. Then one day the warthog ripped him to shreds without the slightest warning.

Warthog skull at my house

This is a warthog skull. The tusks are so sharp at the ends they will cut your finger if you just press on them. Just imagine.

What ripe fool thinks that a 250-lb warthog with vicious tusks is his best friend?

Nobody will ever know; the animal was killed and beheaded. The creature could have been given to a zoo where it could at least be a warthog instead of condemned to death for being a warthog.

Dude. Rescue a dog.

The way I see it, such animals are killed because we’re, well, not as bright as many animals.

My safari operator, Ben Jennings of eTrip Africa, once said to me that “we don’t understand wild.” One of the great understatements of our time.

These days I am inundated with YouTube videos of people claiming that a fox “asked for help” (in English, pray tell, or was it in Latin, their preferred language?) or that a family of deer “came back to thank a family for saving one of its babies” (did they set up a Zoom call to arrange this, perchance?)

It isn’t just that such ridiculous anthropomorphism is rampant, it’s dangerous, if not just criminally dumb. Often when we interfere it can cost the animal’s life if the mother or a herd smells human on it.

Worse, other Tube-tourons desperate for likes will go out of their way to snag an animal or cute baby whatever to get paid subscribers.

Funny how pissed off we humans get when a bear plucks a juicy human off to feed its cubs but we think nothing of plucking a baby ellie from its mother for the zoo, leaving her and her herd in terrible distress.

So you want to be the woman who feeds elk in her yard as though they aren’t perfectly capable of finding their own food?

She got trampled by an aggressive male. True story. What did she expect, that someday she’d triumphantly ride a bull elk naked through her neighborhood like Lady Godiva?

Apparently no amount of warning, no number of warning signs and good-natured education can keep stupid people from chasing bison, getting gored, or chasing mother bears and their cubs, and getting killed or attacked in Yellowstone.

Or falling into incredibly hot, sulphurous ponds and being instantly turned into soup. By the way, the tourons were in a well-marked DANGER/STAY OUT area. Perhaps the sign should include photos of viscous ooze which used to be human. That doesn't stop smokers, so I’m not holding out much hope.

We can access all the necessary information to be safe, but apparently can’t access the necessary brain cells to be sane.

I’m sorry for their families, but honestly, I’m done with people who are dangerous to wildlife (and wild areas) and claim it’s the animal’s fault. Said animals can’t Google how to avoid dangerously stupid humans.

What’s worse, all too often, as

Judith Kitzes

pointed out in a recent comment in another story, the animal pays with its life for our selfishness.

Well, animals can read, so they should know better, right?

To that, in case you missed it: the now-famous exchange with a woman who seemed to assume that deer can read animal crossing signs.

Wildlife experiences overseas

There is a lot of important discussion about the way tourists are drawn into wildlife experiences in developing countries. I’ve already mentioned fake elephant sanctuaries.

Under Covid, most of those “retired” elephants were returned to work in the forests, mothers separated from their babies, just as before. Some of them are worked to death.

But tourists come and they want to see babies. Touch them.

Elephant skin is highly sensitive. One of the better sanctuary operators I visited told me that nobody is allowed to touch the babies. Ever.

Others use those babies as a selling point. The operators, who are desperate for money, allow tourists to wrestle and play with the youngsters, separated from their mothers.

National Geographic did a story in 2019 about animal tourism. It’s worth a read. I may not agree with all of it but they make excellent points. It’s worth considering before you head out to see animals who, behind the scenes (and I’ve seen it), all too often suffer horribly when you’re not there to observe.

One of the worst stories I ever saw was when Argentineans killed a rare baby dolphin by keeping it out of the water while it got passed from person to person FOR SELFIES. Happened more than once.

We are far more dangerous to wildlife than they are to us.

To that, these examples of animal interactions, some of which ended badly or soon will:

A Springfield woman gets fined for her “loyal pet” alligator. No reptile is “loyal.” Komodo dragons, for example, are quite happy to eat their young. I spewed my coffee at that one.

I can’t speak for you but the above picture makes me want to come after this little girl’s parents with a crowbar. That anyone anywhere would write the title that Wally the Alligator just wants to cuddle with you?

Crowbar.

People who think having exotic snakes is cool. Then put said snake on a starvation diet and the snake eats their kid. No, really.

In many states, if you’re really really REALLY stupid, you can own a big cat, although there is a movement to put a stop to that. There are more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild.

Some years ago I was living in Denver and used to work out at the Aurora Bally’s gym. One muscle-head pulled an unbelievable stunt to get a date.

One day he comes towards the front door with a good-sized wild cougar kitten on a leash. Some pretty girls walk up and want to scratch its ears.

The cougar became unhinged, curled all four of its claws into one girl’s calf and buried its fangs into her leg.

While I'm not privy to what happened after that, my guess is that the only “date” he got with her was in court for reckless endangerment.

Then there’s this: the Florida Everglades, in case you didn’t know this, is overwhelmed with the Burmese python, which is methodically wiping out the wildlife and reproducing faster than bunnies.

Look, my home state is home to a great many strange creatures, including its human denizens (I escaped but this label applies to me as well). I vote for the wildlife.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Folks get one, then panic when they realize that it eats the equivalent of their entire family reunion every four weeks.

After ridding themselves of the pesky family members ( just kidding…okay, maybe I'm not, it is Florida) they dump the monster in the wild, creating a living, out-of-control sci-fi story. Florida Fish and Wildlife put the figure between 100,000 to 300,000.

Reproducing like bunnies.

I vote for dumping the python dumpers in the middle of the Everglades and let them find out what it’s like to try to survive out there. But that’s just me.

Why don’t those owners just let their pythons loose at Mar-a-Lago? But I digress.

For what it’s worth, this is an example of how I do it:

Musk ox in Greenland, seen from the lake, 2017 Julia Hubbel. NO CLOSEUPS. NO SELFIES.

I went kayaking in Greenland back in 2017. On the shore we saw herds of musk ox. We stayed in our kayaks well back from the shoreline and watched. No fool in his right mind would walk up to one of these creatures for a selfie…at least in Greenland.

In America, they would.

These days more and more folks think it’s perfectly all right to go pet a moose (bad idea) cuddle a croc (extremely bad idea) or bring a big cat home for their baby boy to cuddle.

I’m cheering on the moose. It seems the only way to get through the concrete masquerading as brains.

You get my point.

Everyone these days wants to be Tippi Degré. Look, I can understand that. But you’re not Tippi, and you’re not Mowgli, for that matter, you’re not me, either. I have some skills with animals. Lots of folks do, far better than mine.

Not many people grow up with animals these days. Even those who do, like our Texas friend with the warthog, don’t seem to respect the dangers.

Somehow the rules don’t apply to them, until they do.

Please consider any travel wildlife experience very carefully. In too many cases it is NOT good for the animals.

As a species we blame the animal for being precisely what it is: a wild animal.

Then we accuse the animals of being the creature that’s more dangerous.

I respectfully and most emphatically disagree.

Yes I want you to travel. Yes I want you to see the wild. It’s disappearing. Perhaps after you see the wild you will get behind conservation efforts, and we need more folks protecting what’s left of their habitat.

But I also don’t want more of us to invade the wild and be pissed at the wild for being wild, and then destroy it further.

Let’s appreciate the beauty and grandeur of these animals from a safe distance.

Let’s protect their habitat and demand that developing countries do more to employ those who are so poor that they will capture, sell and market the last of endangered species just to survive.

There’s much we can do when we are educated and respectful, and full of wonder.

Above all,

Let’s play.

Photo by Gianluca Tristo on Unsplash

Thanks for spending time with me today. I hope this piece invited you to think carefully before you choose a travel experience. If it was valuable, please consider

If you know someone determined to head to Thailand to play in the mud with baby ellies, please also consider

Above all, travel safely and responsibly. Please keep your distance from wild animals so that they will be there for generations to come.