In Which A Reindeer Snots On Fox

Achievement #9 is another favorite childhood experience that I wanted to share with my husband. He had never been to Living Treasures Animal Park (and truthfully, despite there being two in the Pittsburgh area, not a lot of people actually have), and I had to show him how fantastic it was to be up close and personal and petting reindeer. More on that later…

So we picked a beautiful, sunny, and sweltering hot day to head up north to the Moraine State Park location. When I was a child, trips to Living Treasures were often coupled with hiking excursions at McConnells Mills and dinner at the Iron Bridge Inn, and so the entire ‘up north on 79’ experience resonates very nicely in my memory, and I’ve been gradually exposing Michael to all of this fantasticness over the years we’ve been together. Living Treasures is an animal park that combines both petting zoos and a regular zoo. You can’t pet the lions and bears, but you do get quite close to them, and you can pet kangaroos and all sorts of deer and gazelles.

The rest of this blog will be extremely picture-heavy, so that you can share in all the majesty of a wild animal petting zoo. And all the not-so-majestic parts, as well. More on that later. 🙂

First stop was the deer pen, where a small herd of deer took one look at the bag of carrots in our hands and ran straight at us. This one agreed to be patted on the head if he could eat my pants. Fair trade!

They acted like they were my friends, but I suspect they really just wanted my carrots.

I am petting a deer on the nose!! He is lovin’ it!

The kangaroos would not sit still enough for me to pet them, so I just pretended to be one of their kind. And then I shared a carrot.

You can’t look at these cows and tell me they don’t look like Muppets. They sure knew who had the carrots!

After I fed them carrots, the little emo cows trusted me enough to let me pet them. Then they probably listened to Morrissey and drank PBR.

This is what Michael looks like as a piggy. We did not get to pet any piggies 🙁

This is when I finally got to realize my lifelong dream of petting a reindeer!! Look how much that reindeer is loving it!! I thought I had a friend for life!

Then I was like, “Reindeer, we are such good friends, I am going to give you a carrot!”

And the reindeer was like, “Oh wow, we really are best friends, and I’m going to take this carrot and be so cute and we’re going to just be the happiest two best friends ever!”

And then the reindeer sneezed all freaking over me.

I did not want to touch the reindeer snot on my pants, so I made Michael clean it up for me. (Then I forgave the reindeer and commiserated with it over how bad this allergy season has been.)

Then we accidentally walked in on the prairie dogs’ family portrait session at Sears.

And then I was like, “Well, a reindeer has already snotted on me, I mightaswell pet a porcupine.” (For the record, I did not know this is what a porcupine looks like! I really thought they were more hedgehog-like and round!)

Us outside the entrance, after we had given away all of our carrots and petted every animal within reach that didn’t want to bite.

The Living Treasures sign as seen from the road… Or as seen in the rear view mirror from the road as you accidentally drive past it oops. 🙂