Had a lovely day at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Possibly a strange choice for someone who doesn’t like going on rollercoasters and other such rides. Indeed I did spend a large portion of my day holding the bags while my friends went on the stupid rides. I wasn’t entirely left out though. Oh no, I went on the Teacups! (Bit fast and spinny, but I coped.)
This is Busch Gardens Europe and it was highly amusing having a wander around the Americans’ idea of “England” and “Scotland”. Also a little bit weird seeing an actual red telephone box again. Haven’t even seen one of those in the UK for a while now. As well as all the rollercoasters, Busch Gardens also has animals, and in “Scotland” one of these was the Border Collie. Not really what I would expect to see in a zoo, but hey. Slightly odd seeing sheep grazing in a field too, as this is something you do not see at all in the US.
The best bit was the wolf cubs. They were three and a half months old, but rather than the cute little puppies you might expect, they were the size of fully grown German Shepherds. You could easily mistake them for the same, apart from the piercing blue eyes. In fact, one family on a holiday somewhere in the American Midwest did exactly that and, thinking the little pup they had stumbled across was a GS that had got lost, took it into their mobile home overnight before taking it to a vet the next day. The vet realised it was a wolf, and potentially dangerous, and this pup has now ended up living in Busch Gardens as it couldn’t be released back into the wild. The wolf cubs here have a domestic dog as their surrogate mother at the moment, who is teaching them pack behaviour so that they can be successfully integrated into the larger existing pack at Busch Gardens eventually. I could have sat and watched them all day, they are so enchanting.
The American Eagles were pretty cool too, and rather large. They would have been a bit more impressive if they didn’t totally remind me of Sam from the Muppets.
Busch Gardens has a daily pet show, which was really good. It only lasts about twenty minutes and has at least 20 animals participating, so each one is on for a very short amount of time and in most cases does nothing other than run across the stage, so they are certainly not overworked. All the animals have come from local rescue centres and are now given lots of love and care at Busch Gardens. As well as cats and dogs they also have pigs and ducks. I was particularly impressed by the parrot that could do maths. There’s got to be some trick to it, but I couldn’t figure it out….
statesidewife 