Hilina Loves Animals

Today we went to "Wildlife World" in Scottsbluff, NE. Basically, it is a huge collection of animals that were hunted by big-game hunters and then donated to this little museum at the end of their life for educational purposes.

I met the founder who hand-painted all of diaramas and put up all the displays. He was pretty proud of his little operation.

They also created some models of ancient mammals that used to live in the region millions of years ago, including the largest land mammal ever to have lived, the Paraceratherium which stood 19 feet tall, 30 feet long, and weighed up to 40,000 lbs.

Hilina just loves looking at all of these animals and can probably name over 100 mammals by name at this stage. She doesn't do the fine details as anything "deer-like" is a deer and anything "sheep-like" is a big horn sheep. But, it's a pretty good list and she is really knowledable about North American fauna since she has seen so many of them in the wild already!

She has also developed an awareness that there is a place called Africa with a whole set of fauna not located around here. She has a desire to go to Africa someday!