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Student's summer highlighted by lion cubs AN UPDATE ON YAZ

Spotsylvania County teen's summer job: cuddling with lions at South African wildlife park

Date published: 8/4/2008

BY JEFF BRANSCOME

Kelsey Walsh volunteered at a South African lion park for two weeks this summer and has the scars to prove it.

"One of my pairs of jeans was slightly eaten by a lion," said Walsh, 18, of Spotsylvania County.

Actually, the lion cub clawed at a small hole in her pants and ripped it open even more. It wasn't cause for alarm, just another play day at the Seaview Game and Lion Park near Port Elizabeth.

"They're not trying to be mean, but they think you're a cub," said Walsh, who graduated from Fredericksburg Academy and will attend Christopher Newport University in the fall.

The park has about 60 lions and more than 40 species of wildlife, including wildebeests and giraffes. It breeds white lions, which became extinct in the wild in 1994, according to the Global White Lion Protection Trust.

Walsh said her older brother, Brendan, encouraged her to take off a year after high school to travel. But she opted for the two-week trip in June to South Africa after considering options such as a dolphin conservation program in Greece.

"I've never met anyone who could say, 'Well, for two weeks, I cuddled with lions,'" she said.

Some days, she woke up at 5:30 a.m. to help the baby lions relieve themselves and then gave them bottles of milk, egg yolks and powdered gelatin.

She also took the animals for 10-minute strolls. "You just open the gate, and they run out," she said.

At playtime, some of the lions tussled with truck tires or hung from trees.

"I liked them all," Walsh said. "They're hilarious."

She grew especially fond of a 7-month-old white lion named Makulu, who fell out of trees often.

Leo, a baby white lion, also grew on her. She said he sometimes fell asleep while being bottle-fed.

"He had a yellow pacifier that he sucked on," she said. "He was like a human."

The young lions did bite, but they backed off when Walsh said "Ouch!" and tapped them on the nose. She wasn't allowed to interact with adult lions.

For her senior project at Fredericksburg Academy, Kelsey Walsh trained a black Labrador named Yaz to be a guide dog for the visually impaired. She took the dog to class and said Yaz has come a long way since her days of whining during lectures. In June, Yaz was sent to New York to be evaluated for a selective breeding program. She wasn't chosen, but she is now being harness trained in New York to become a guide dog. Her ultimate test will be a walk through New York City. The nonprofit Guiding Eyes for the Blind oversaw Walsh's project.

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Date published: 8/4/2008