For the longest of time I have seen giraffes in pictures, videos, documentaries, magazines, etc. As a tall person myself, I connected with them and their sky high legs, although I am lacking in the graceful department, that they seem to have mastered. I had the opportunity of feeding one of these gentle giants today. And while it was in a zoo, and they had their daily routine feeding.

Being a relatively tall person, its easy to relate to an animal who is known for being the tallest animal in the world. If you don't know which animal that is, then maybe its time to watch animal planet again, or maybe open a encyclopedia or something. So the giraffe, more common the Masai giraffe, which is one of the more common sub species, is what I had the honor of meeting the other day. A day which could be considered one of the best days in my, if i said life that could be a stretch as I have had many best days, so lets say one of the best days in the last few years of my life. A friend of mine, who knows about my giraffe connection (obsession) has a pass to the Toledo Zoo, where they happen to have giraffe feeding at 10:30 every day.

Alrighty so we get to the zoo and head to the giraffe enclosure first, I mean thats the main attraction in my eyes, and I had to be the first one in line. They have 4 giraffes, 3 adults and 1 baby, a very cute baby if you ask me. One of the adults is a hefty 16 years old and has an issue where her tongue hangs out all the time, which yes looks very ridiculous. She reminded me of the hyena from the lion king. Until I found out that she had a jaw disease which had to be removed and so she lost a part of her jaw that keeps her massive 13 inch tongue in her mouth. Yes giraffes don't just have insanely long legs and neck, but they also have an impressive sized mouth muscle. You had to pay for lettuce, $5 for 4 pieces (the individual experience) or 12 (the family package) for $11, which is a little outrageous, but totally worth it.

Going all out, I bought my family package of lettuce and was introduced to Trevor, a 6 year old male Masai giraffe, husband of Elli, 14 and father to his first offspring Kipenzi. Being one of the first people to feed him, Trevor was very interested in the green goodness that I had in my hand. As soon as I separated a piece his tongue attacked, well not really attacked more like grabbed in a way, which is a strange way to describe the action of a tongue but its true. After feeding this first piece of lettuce, thats when the tears started flowing. You are probably thinking, why is this girl crying its just a giraffe, but when I was 6 my parents got me a life size giraffe, which at the time was so big to me that it could be life size. This giraffe could be sat on and everything, and was the present that conceived my love for these gentle giants. Alison, a little girl that camps near me turned 6 about two years ago, and so I passed on my giraffe (giffy), so meeting an actual giraffe was a little emotional for me. I had lots of pictures taken of this amazing moment of course, by Adam, the caretaker of Trevor. He definitely knew how to take some good angles for sure.

He you can observe the tip of his 13 inch tongue.

Sadly even 12 pieces of lettuce goes by pretty fast, and before I knew it, this amazing yet greedy creature ate all of its snack. I asked Adam how much that they ate, and he said that they usually get around 40 pounds of lettuce a day, which doesn't even include the food they get in their enclosure. Honestly I wish I had the metabolism of this animals, I mean they look great! Though I am not sure its possible for a giraffe to be fat, I haven't seen one, which isn't saying much because trevor was the first giraffe I have seen in person, but it will not be the last. Now that I have had a taste of the good life, I will have to return.