the Olympic Game Farm was heartbreaking. here's what our visit was like, more or less in order.
the llamas are wandering around the road, taking bread from visitors' hands. there were two very young llamas that we saw. all are gorging themselves on bread. the whole area is overrun with peacocks of all ages--easily a couple hundred--and hundreds of gulls and dozens of crows. the two zebras are penned into the middle of the llama area, with no shelter at all. towards the back of this area, there are yaks, one with a splintered horn with long pieces sticking out. the density of animals was overwhelming.
i've seen quite a few zoo bears, and i've seen wild bears on half a dozen occasions, in at least three different states, and i know what a bear looks like. the "waving bears" are massively overweight animals fenced into a grass-and-dirt area with very little in the way of water and nowhere to hide. they sit along the fence, picking up slices of bread visitors throw to them endlessly, for eight or more hours a day, every day but two of the year. if the bread lands a few feet away, they won't go get it, because another piece will land closer soon enough. they look inflated. when they did move, they moved in a completely different way from any bear i've ever seen. if there had been a way out at this point, i would have taken it. but there isn't. you have to continue, at 0-3 mph, spewing exhaust, while you witness the suffering of these animals.
the timber wolves are enclosed in chain link cages, also on flat grass and dirt, roughly 15'x15'x15' with a plywood doghouse-style enclosure along one side. the back wall of this "den" is chain link. in other words, they have nowhere to go to hide. there are no trees or structures in the cages at all. not so much as a log or a bush. the wolves are pacing madly. the big cats (bengal and siberian tigers, and male and female african lions) are in identical enclosures, one to a cage. they were laying, perfectly still, with their eyes open, staring.
the last animal you see is the european fallow deer. they behave like the llamas, sticking their heads in the window and looking for bread.
the aquarium is basically a concrete above-ground pool with windows in it, and a wooden shed around it. you walk into the shed, look through the windows, and see the fish you'd find in local streams. sort of. trout, a sturgeon (not moving at all), and so on. to identify the fish, you refer to a poster taped to the wall, titled something like "Washington Sport Fish". nice.
the reptile area is one room, painted white and with glaring lights, with a dozen or so tanks with a couple boas, a python, a chameleon, a turtle, and so on.
we went into the gift shop so i could ask some questions. the employee didn't know where all the animals came from, but knew that some were retired from TV and movies (for instance, the bear from Grizzly Adams was trained by the guy who started this place, and retired there), and some had been pets (illegal, mostly) that had been surrendered. i, always the optimist, offered, "so this place is sort of a rescue organization?" she kind of stammered, and gave a non-answer. i asked if there was a program in place to release the young into the wild, and she just stared at me then told me they wouldn't survive. (in case you're wondering, yes, given the right program, they would.)
i kept hoping SO hard that there was something i was missing that would make me say, "OH, i see, so this is where these animals can come when there's nowhere else for them to go, and this is just the best that can be done with the resources at hand". but that didn't fit with the elk and the bison especially, or with the other young animals.
this evening, i did some research, and it backs up my gut feeling. go looking for an Exotic Pets Report on Born Free USA dot org. just search "olympic" in the PDF. it pretty much lays out the same things that upset me, plus a few disturbing safety issues for visitors.
this place is a relic. it's a throwback to a time when animals were penned up to be stared at and teased and taunted until you got an amusing reaction, then fed whatever was cheap and handy. i'll be writing a few letters this week about this place, and doing some more research to see if there's a way to help get it shut down. it looks like the guy who started it, who does seem to have truly cared about the animals (though he knew little about what they needed beyond food and fences) has died. i don't know what the status is now of this property, but from what i've read the quality of life for the animals hasn't changed in the last handful of years.
i get that it came into existence a long time ago when this was how most people believe animals should be kept. but it needs to be dismantled now. read more