Chasing Giraffes

My little sister graduated from High School. Usually when something big like that happens, families plan a vacation together. Ours happened by accident. We missed our flight home - and had to stay with some friends for a while until we could get our flight changed. Our friends live on a ranch. Not a ranch for cows and horses, but for wild animals. This ranch had giraffes, ostriches, wildebeasts, and impala. The giraffes were the coolest. I think they might be my favorite animal!
FACTS
Did you know that there are 4 different types of giraffes? Each different type lives in a different part of Africa. The only way to tell what kind it is is by looking at the spots. This giraffe is called a Maasai giraffe. They're the ones that live in Kenya. If you click here, you can see what the other types of spots are, and where in Africa they come from.

Just from looking at the picture I took you can tell that giraffes live in very dry places where there is lots of grass and short trees.  National Geographic said that the only other animals that giraffes had to be afraid of were lions and hyenas (like Scar's army from the Lion King).

So on this ranch that we were visiting there were lots of giraffes. I watched one eat the leaves off a tree as I had my breakfast. After we were all done with breakfast my whole family thought it would be fun to go for a walk and see how close we could get to them. Giraffes are super quiet - so we had to be too.
When we got this close to them we took a picture because we weren't sure if the giraffe was going to run away from us. Their legs are so long we would never be able to catch up!






Then we tried to get closer. . .

I didn't get much closer than that to a giraffe. I don't think I was quiet enough for them. I got close enough to take the picture below, and then it began to run off. 

Maybe I wasn't any good at chasing giraffes. But why would I want to scare such great animals? They are so beautiful and interesting I would much rather watch them than chase them.