about
my trip to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to see the
REAL Balto himself. He was stuffed of course, but he still looked
cool!(All pictures link to larger images)
If you've read the new section in my Balto Section (My Trip to Cleveland) then
you'll know about
my trip to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to see the
REAL Balto himself. He was stuffed of course, but he still looked
cool!
Anyway,
also in the museum were a small pack of wolves, three actually. I
took two pictures of them; one of the two adults and another of
the smaller wolf inside a den. Unfortunately the picture of the
adults didn't come out very well so I scanned the one of the wolf
in the den instead. He still looks very cute! In the prehistoric
section of the museum (with the dinosaurs and mastodons and such)
they had the skull of a Dire Wolf, the ancient ancestor to modern
day wolves. I took a picture of it too, but decided not to scan
it.
After spending several hours in the museum we went to the zoo to see the wolves. Along the way we saw a lot of other nice animals, but my main goal was to see the wolves before taking the long car trip home. They were in a large log cabin setup, and there was a wall made up of large (floor to ceiling) windows that led out into the wolves' enclosure. Since the wolves were hard to see there were two remote controlled cameras that you could take control of. I zoomed right in on the faces of two sleeping wolves. They were very cute!
The next
part of the cabin held a large tank full of various fish such as
long-nosed gar, Northern Pike, bluegill, and smallmouth bass.
They were in an open tank that also allowed the wolves to drink
the water, and if they were hungry enough perhaps catch a meal.
In the third part of the cabin was the Wolf Gift Shop, the place
where you could specifically buy wolf souveniers. I got a nice
looking keychain (that's three that I own now!). There were also
two windows looking into the enclosure.
As I exited the cabin, I looked to my left into the wovles'
enclosure. I could see one of the 
wolves walking near edge of
the fence, but it was still pretty far away. Then my mother
called me inside the gift shop again. Through the windows leading
into the enclosure were three wolves. They had gotten up from
their naps and started walking about in front of me. It was cool!
Then the lazy bums laid down again for another sleep session.
There were about five wolves (that I could see) in the enclosure.
That's four more than I've ever seen in real life. It was a
terrific experience for me!