An Evening at the Land Fill

Last night was the Texas Exes Austin Chapter’s Orange & White Kickoff Fundraiser hosted by Texas Disposal Systems.   We drove out to the land fill and headed to their beautiful event cent.  This is the main ball room.  The silent auction was held in the room on the far right of the picture.
 
This is an Exotic Game Ranch and it was decorated to highlight that. 


There was live country music from Matt Deaton & Front Porch Texas.

There was an open bar with beer and wine and a Bar-B-Que dinner catered by Pok-E-Jo's.

Although  there are mostly hoofed animals on the property, they had specimens of several other animals.

From the pavilion you could see the giraffe’s compound.

Before dinner we loaded up on an old school bus to take a trip around the property.  Jim Gregory,one of the co-owners, drove the bus and told us about the various animals.
Here are a pair of black swans

Here are a pair of breeding rhinos.  Unfortunately they haven’t bred yet so the male may get replaced.

This is what the land looked like as we drove in.  We had to stop several times for the antelope to cross the road.  We also had to stop for an ostrich.

I felt like I was on a safari with all the exotic animals roaming free.

In zoos you just see one kind of animal in a caged area.  Here they all run free and share the same space.  The white ones in the back are Addax.  The dark one in front is a Blackbuck Antelope.

There are man made lakes all over the property.  The ones with the spots are Axis Deer.

These deer live in the water and eat the algae to keep the ponds clean.

This is a Beisa Oryx.  I wish I could remember the names of all the different animals.

Another Axis Deer.

There are lots of antelope on the property.  Their gestation period is very short so you see lots of babies and toddlers running around.

There are trees around to provide shade from this hot summer sun.

They have a breeding pair of emus who laid fifteen eggs that all hatched.  So all of these emus are from the same family.

Here is one of the adult emus.

Here is one of their ostriches.

More antelope with something else in the background.




This beautiful creature is a Dama Gazelle.  Their legs are so long it’s no wonder they can run so fast.


They have animals from all over.  This pen held kangaroos and wallabys.

Note the ones beside the shed on the ground.

Here is one of their adult Dromedary Camels.

And here is the baby that followed the bus along the fence line.

This is the male of a breeding pair of ostriches.

He had just gotten up from sitting on his cache of eggs.

These animals are by themselves because they are mean. 

We stopped at the giraffe enclosure to see “Stretch” one of two Reticulated Giraffes.

A lot of people got off to feed the giraffes carrots that the Gregory grandsons handed out.

Back inside we had dinner and then the Texas Cheerleaders performed.  Even “Hook Em”, the mascot, was there in the back left side of the picture.

They performed several cheers.

Then we sang the “Eyes of Texas” with out horns up.  That’s my arm in the foreground.

One of the silent auction items was the chance to fire Smokey the cannon.  Here are the Cowboys getting it ready.  On the far right is Mike, whom we met in Corpus Christi.  He is now on the chapter advisory board.

We almost missed getting a picture of the sunset.

The officers got Wayne to take a group picture.

On the way out we were able to get some more pictures of the animals roaming around.

He turned and looked at us as if to say get out of here so we did.

I can’t remember a more enjoyable evening.  In addition to the animals that we took pictures of, we saw buffalo, zebra, white swans, elk, and jack rabbits.  If you want to learn more about this facility go to http://texasdisposal.com/index.php/exotic-exotic-game-ranch