Going on safari

All of a sudden I wanted to form friendships with wild animals and went to a Safari-park yesterday, partly in the hope of entertaining my mother for the belated "Respect-Elderly-Day". Got up at five and left home at six. My mom and daughter were especially excited about the coming adventure of feeding lions directly from a lion bus.
We waited about one hour before the gate opened and no sooner did it open than we parked our car in the parking lot and dashed to buy a ticket for the lion bus. We got on the second bus. In the bus were full of people sitting in two rows back to back facing outside of the bus. Never caring that we were the only group that consisted of only adults without any child, we got more and more excited and thrilled as we were coming closer to the feeding zone. First bear zone. As the bus stopped bears came up. One of them stood up just in front of us face to face. I picked up a piece of cut apple with a kind of large scissors-like tweezers and stuck it out to him through the wire net that barely separated me and the wild beast. The bear was big. It struggled to take the apple from the tweezers which I firmly held. I did not let the apple go. He stuck out his tongue and skillfully wrap it around the apple. I suddenly felt sorry for him and loosened my grip. He swallowed the apple in one gulp without showing much appreciation and moved to the next apple held by my daughter. She did the same as me. I enjoyed watching the length of the tongue while she was feeding. It looked as if 30 cm long and 5cm wide.
The bus tour was culminated by lions that came up to the bus for meat. Basically we did the same to the lions as we did to the bears. THere were male and female lions. Fortunately for us, the lion that stood up in front of us was a male with a magnificent mane. Our eyes met for a blinking moment. I was overwhelmed by the size of his face. It was huge. He had an uncountable number of scars on his face. He looked fierce and scary. When he opened his mouth to took the meat from the tweezers, I saw fangs that were sharp and big and in no mood for teasing. I let the meat go in the way that we obey a man in power.
Watching the beast one mesh away was something we must do before we go to another world (冥土の土産). I hope the same to my mom.