Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Okay. Maybe there were no tigers and the lion was a mountain lion, but what a great place to get some wildlife photos! I'm talking about the Maine Wildlife Park in Gray, Maine. A big thank you to Karen Littlefield, who shared information about the park a couple of meetings ago. Wanting to get some wildlife shots, I checked out the website at MaineWildlifePark.com, called to make an appointment, and spent two wonderful hours in the rain on a Sunday morning getting some great pictures. The pass cost $50 an hour, but unlike other park visitors, you have a ranger who guides you around the park and drives you from site to site, lets you inside the pens (as long as you sign a waiver), and/or offers you a ladder to get up above the side of the pens. I opted not to enter the pens with the bears, large cats, or moose, but was still able to get some nice shots. I had no problem going into the fox pen or commiserating with the raccoon though. Most of the deer stayed hidden, but one buck, George, let me walk right up to him. Of course, because it was a rainy morning, he had no intention of getting up onto his feet and moving anyway! There is a huge assortment of birds at the park. One pen includes species not native to Maine that have been donated, but most of the birds are those that you would find locally. A really nice feature of the park is that the pens are large and offer the wildlife as natural a setting as possible. This makes the pictures seem much more natural than many other animal enclosures would allow. I highly recommend checking out their website and then visiting the park. Even if you don't get the photographer's pass but just walk around the park, I think you could still get some nice pictures. I will definitely be visiting again! By Carol Roderick

http://www.state.me.us/ifw/education/wildlifepark/