Siberian Tiger Preserve

Heading out of Harbin.

A really cool bush sculpture.

On Friday since we didn't have to be at the theatre till 5pm, we planed a trip to the Harbin Siberian Tiger Preserve. We were all very excited to go and experience a natural habitat for these tigers.

As a preface to this, had I have known that the preserve was actually kinda like a zoo i might not have gone. I don't like zoo's in the states! None the less, there was a good bit of grounds that the tigers could roam. However, the cages that were on the grounds were quite small. (Even though we only saw about 10 tigers in those cages.)

So we all boarded onto a bus at 9am and headed off to the preserve. On our arrival we boarded into a medium size bus and headed out into the gated off areas of the preserve. At first the driver made us keep the sliding windows closed, and with no air conditioning we all started to rebel. Lets think about this. You are driving through an area filled with tigers and they tell you to close the glass windows. Does anyone see a problem here? Hmm, false security maybe? So within 5 Min's we had opened up the windows and spitting distance from the tigers.

I cannot even begin to tell you the fear that ensues when you are 3-10 feet away from these animals. They are amazing and deserve alot of respect. Even at 10 feet away, when a tiger "purrrrs" you feel it deep in your body. It is an intense feeling. Below, this guy was NOT happy to see us.

We drove thru gate after gate... through young adults, to breeding adults, to mature adults, into the liger zone. And PAUSE.

LIGERS EXIST!!!!!!!!! Ligers. 1 lion + 1 tiger= liger . I had NO freakin' idea!!!

End pause. So we traveled all over the grounds looking for tigers, and it was very amazing. What wasn't amazing was that our wonderful driver had ZERO respect for the tigers. He drove like a bat out of hell. We were in caravan with another bus, and the entire time the 2 drivers honked there horn at each other to either speed up or get out of the others way. I mean it was just silly. You would think they would have had some consideration for the tiger's surroundings.

At any case, it was amazing. After our driving trip through the grounds, they had a huge caged walking structure that you could walk over another tiger area. And the highlight of this part, was that you could feed a live cow($150), goat($60), chicken($8), duck($8), or flying duck($20) to the tigers. (If you go on You Tube and enter "Siberian Tiger Feeding" you can see the goat)

Now i know what you are thinking and no we did not feed a cow or goat to the tigers. I do have to say that it felt very primeval and gladiator-Esq. Believe me, there were many of thoughts raised regarding this matter. (In this photo, i was inch's away from this tigers paws.)

1. The animal has to eat, and technically it is survive of the fittest and the tiger is at the top of the food chain.

2. It is a zoo, so this animal could easily be eating grain products.

3. Zoo's around the world will feed live animals to help keep animals like tigers in top condition and use to hunting in the wild (IE. if they are ever released back into the wild).

4. What about the duck, the duck has the right to live to.

5. The least they could do is serve dead animals to the tigers, thus eliminating the torture of the duck.

6. Our token vegetarian wanted to thus throw one of us "horrible meat eating humans" in and see what happens.

And on and on and on.

Alas, we chose to buy 1 chicken and 2 ducks to feed to the tigers. Cause after all, it made for some good photography. I WILL UPLOAD THE 3 Video's IN MY NEXT BLOG, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO WATCH THEM. They really aren't that bad. (Below- I think i love this photo the best. These 2 tigers played with each other for almost 20 Min's while we were there watching. Just so cool to see in person.)

To conclude our trip to the preserve, we then were able to take pictures with a baby Siberian Tiger. (Cost was about 6 bucks)

And that was my day at the Tiger park.