Watch Your Fingers! By Devo on Aug 03, 2009 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

Zebras don't believe in personal space. Neither do addax nor fallow deer. I learned these and many more interesting tidbits at the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, Texas. My father and I visited there in May, on our way to California from Indiana via a rather non-direct route. It is basically a drive-through wildlife park. The animals live on 1700 acres and a 9 mile drive takes you to see them. The animals are free roaming, so you cannot leave your vehicle (which is a good thing, as zebras aren't the sweetest creatures). The price to get into the park is anywhere from $12 to $20 depending on the day and season, but if you want to feed the animals, you will have to pay another $7.95. It was pretty fun feeding the animals, as some will come up to your car. You are supposed to drop the food to the ground but people have obviously been feeding them by hand because many stuck their heads in through the windows. Some of the animals, such as the zebra, are more forward than others. Zebra will not hesitate to hint that you should give them food...and by "hint" I mean "demand." My father foolishly ignored one while he was taking a photo, and it bit him in the arm. In fact, a helpful analogy would be food is to zebras as respect is to the mafia. Everybody requires something.

Fossil Rim also acts as an endangered species breeding center, and they have one of the largest herds of the endangered addax antelope in all the world. The addax are another species that will not hesitate to jump into your car for food. I suspect such boldness may have contributed to their current status as "critically endangered."

This place was fun and educational. The only bad thing was that there were swarms of human children there, which is a common occurrence at animal parks. Also, since you are driving through, some of the other drivers can get annoying. Honking is a terrible thing to do when you are surrounded by animals that have hooves and horns and will not hesitate to kick your car.

Here is a list of some of the species living at Fossil Rim: addax, common zebra, giraffe, white rhino, red deer, fallow deer, cheetah, ocelot, ostrich, bongo, greater kudu, eland, blackbuck, waterbuck, common wildebeest, Arabian oryx, scimitar-horned oryx, and Thompson's gazelle.