Aiken area nursing home gets visit from some furry friends

Feb. 27—Four-legged traffic was part of Tuesday afternoon's scene at Anchor Post Acute Care, via a goodwill gesture from one of Aiken County's most popular tourist attractions.

Eudora Wildlife Safari Park, from the Salley area, provided a load of friendly fauna — representatives of the goat, sheep, alpaca and donkey communities — for the nursing home's residents and staff members to meet.

"We started doing this during the pandemic, in 2020," said Eudora representative Elouise Pool, who was half of the delivery and wrangling crew. "We actually brought animals out here, so that we can walk up and down the windows, so people can see from the outside."

The offering has been free of charge from the start, with the idea of providing some welcome relief for residents, "so they they can have something other than just four walls to look at," she said.

Pool and co-worker Becky Jourdan overcame an automotive failure on their way to Aiken and set up a pen for a couple of hours at the nursing home, allowing residents to pet, feed and take a look — as close as they might choose — at the visitors and get some basic information about the creatures.

The traveling trailer goes as far afield as Columbia and Augusta, Pool said, adding, "Most everybody loves animals, and they enjoy petting them, and the people that don't want to pet them or feed them ... want to look at them."

The safari park, also known as Eudora Farms, is a work in progress, with current projects including establishment of a walk-through trail with such creatures as ring-tailed lemurs, African servals, binturongs, a tortoise and kangaroos.

The park's founder, Mark Nisbet, noted in 2022, "We've put in some permanent structures now, and we're also getting ready to do a few projects with our giraffe enclosure, our observation deck and a few other things," Nisbet said.

Farther in the future, a dream is to "have a couple of tree houses that people could rent and stay in overnight," he said.

Nisbet's creation dates back to the early 1990s, when it was composed of about 30 acres, and has expanded wildly in the past decade, to the point of now covering about 250 acres and offering an up-close look at hundreds of exotic creatures.

The park, due east of Wagener, is at 219 Salem Lane, near Salley. For more information, call 803-564-5358 or visit eudorafarms.net.

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