But I Smile Anyway…

Linda’s SoCS prompt…

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “wild animal.” Choose a wild animal (or many wild animals) and use it any way you’d like in your post. Enjoy!

This term in school, we are focusing on animals as a topic. Pets, Jungle Animals, Unusual Animals, Mythical Animals, Animal Mums and Babies, Winged Creatures.

The kids absolutely love it. Most have never been to a country where they can see these animals in the wild.

The wildest of wild animals that they see would be the foxes and squirrels in the gardens and parks.

Some may have been to a zoo, but although it is great fun for the kids, zoos aren’t my kind of place.

I hate the way these majestic creatures are in enclosures that are often too small for them, and despite attempts to recreate their natural habitat, they seem sad…

Here in Kent, we have the Aspinall Foundation, where there are two huge safari parks, Howlett’s and Port Lympne, where the animals who live there have many acres to roam. They are usually there to help them before being taken back to their unnatural habitats and reintroduced to living as true wild animals.

I’ve been to the smaller of the two a couple of times, and have seen elephants, rhinos, tigers and beautiful gorillas alongside other smaller species that may be endangered.

Though I feel honoured to have seen them up close, I still feel that sadness in them.

It’s a far cry from sitting in the car in Kenya, on the way from one town to another, driving through the Rift Valley, and seeing the herds of wildebeast and gazelle roaming free or sitting in the turrets. of the Gurduwarea Makindu, and watching a family of giraffes wandering around or staying in the Lake Baringo camp, surrounded by waters where crocodiles and hippos live. (Let me tell you, hippos are rather noisy at night!) Or visiting Lake Victoria and Lake Bogoria and marvelling at the pink shorelines, which are flocks of flamingoes in reality.

It’s been over 20 years since I was able to see these sights with my own eyes… Maybe one day I can take my own little family, and share these marvels with them, too.