Tiger World

In the local news the past couple months has been a lady, Lea Jaunakais, who has been looking for some land to purchase where she could build a tiger sanctuary - a dream she has had since she was three years old. She was going to purchase some land in South Carolina, but that deal fell through and instead she was given the opportunity to purchase a small private zoo northeast of Charlotte. The owner of the Metrolina Zoo had decided he no longer wanted to run the zoo, so Lea stepped in and is going to turn the former zoo into an animal conservation and education center. Many of the animals at the zoo have been sold to other private zoos and the center will be the home for tigers and a few other exotic animals. The main focus of the zoo will be tigers, hence the name Tiger World.

Jullian and I, along with others from the CNPA camera club that I'm in, went up to Tiger World this Saturday to assist with renovations and clean up. We got there about 10:00 and worked on taking down fencing & animal cages, raking leaves and painting. We worked until about 4:00 and then they took us around to several of the cages to take pictures of the animals. It was pretty fun working right next to some of the animal cages, but you had to watch your back by the monkeys because if you were close enough to their cage they would snatch whatever they could from you and they were pretty quick. The manager of Tiger World lost his sunglasses when one monkey, appropriately named Rascal, grabbed them from him. They tried to bribe the monkey with food, but he thought it was a game and wouldn't give up the glasses - even after snatching the food from their hand. The monkey was actually teasing them with the glasses. It was really quite funny to watch.

The lions and tigers were really huge! I had never been so close to any large cats as we were at Tiger World and I was amazed at their size. They are really massive! One of the nine month old lions is as big, if not bigger than a human. You could see, too, that they had incredible strength just watching them play. They could seriously injure a human being with little effort or just by playing around with them. Most of the large cats were pretty calm and had the same type of mannerisms as domestic house cats. They would come up to the fence and rub along it the same way a cat will rub up against your leg. When I was taking pictures at the end of the day, one of the jaguars was rubbing along the cage and wanted to be pet, just like a domestic cat. (In fact, most of the animals would come up to you for food or to be pet since they are used to having people around.) Anyway, he was just inches away from my face on the other side of the cage. I wanted to pet him, but they told us not to because, just like a house cat, they can be temperamental and with their strength bite your fingers right off with little or no effort. So, I resisted the urge to pet him.

There was a male lion and two females that are in season that were in one cage together. We couldn't even get near that cage because the male lion would charge at you to keep you away, which is a normal response during mating season. After they mate and the female becomes pregnant the male will be calm again. During the day while we were working we could hear the male lion roaring every thirty minutes or so as he would do in the wild. We could hear him all the way across the zoo and they said he gets a whole lot louder than he was being. Pretty amazing!

Right now there are more than twenty tigers, ten lions, two bears, several monkeys and other exotic animals at Tiger World. It was really a neat experience being there and helping out. I hope we're able to go back and help out some more. You can find out more info about Tiger World at http://www.tigerworld.us/.

This is Rascal with the ear piece of the sunglasses he ripped apart.


This is Hope and she is about a year and a half old.


This white tiger's name is Alaska.