Today was our final day volunteering at Carolina Tiger Rescue. We continued work on the lion's den, which proved to be difficult since the lions were super playful in the morning, making them very distracting to us! Most of us kept sneaking away from our fencing duties to take pictures of the adorable lions sunning their bellies all snuggled up together. So cute! But after about 3 hours of hard work, we managed to replace 8 rusty poles in the lion's cage and attach the fencing to brand new poles. After all the fencing work we completed this week, we feel pretty confident in our skills that we could start a fencing business in Columbia to fund our college tuitions. The wonderful workers at the tiger rescue were nice enough to make us some fantastic tacos for lunch and even get us a cake! Yum! With our bellies full once again, Scott, the volunteer coordinator, led us on an official tour of the facility. He discussed all the different species of animals they house there, including servals, ocelots, caracals, tigers, lions, and, my personal favorite, the binturongs. He told us the personal stories of most of the animals and how they came to be at Carolina Tiger Rescue. Tiger Rescue is a sanctuary, which means they are a non-profit organization, cannot use the animals for breeding, cannot buy, sell or trade animals or their parts, and the animals cannot come into contact with the public. They taught us the importance of not keeping wild animals as pets since they cannot be domesticated. We learned a lot of important facts about the pet trade industry and how the public needs to be educated to reduce the number of wild animals kept as pets. After the tour, we were back on the road through the beautiful Jefferson National Forest in Virginia and arrived to our home for the night at Blessed Sacrament Church in West Virginia.
I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we've had a wonderful week together bonding over tigers, food, and weird sleeping habits. It's been a great experiencing getting to know everyone better and spending a week helping out a great organization! That's all for tonight!
With love,
Tigers ASB
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