In the event you find yourself headed West on I-10 passing through Picacho, Arizona, make sure to stop at Rooster Cogburn’s Ostrich Ranch. For the best experience, get there right when they open, and Smiley the donkey will gleefully welcome you like he did me.

Oh, and definitely spring for the optional Stingray feeding at the end.

I’m not usually a big fan of keeping animals in zoo’s, but this place is more like an interactive farm. You’re right there with the animals the whole time, feeding donkeys one pellet at a time, right from the palm of your hand.

After feeding each donkey in the corral, including Smiley, we stopped by the parakeet house to watch scores of them surgically attack glued sticks of bird seed, then moved onto the deer walk where I had three of them eating out of my hand at one point. Then we strolled over to feed the goats both up in the penthouse tower and poking through a wooden wall like living trophy mounts.

To their right were the ostriches, who are far more intense than their neighbors the docile, yet adorable sheep, who actually made the dwarf goats seem passive. Across from them, dozens of super insanely cute, soft, and fluffy bunnies bound around only a stones throw from the ducks flapping over in their splash pond.

You get to feed all of them.

In an aviary all their own were the Rainbow Lorikeets, Australian birds so colorful and happy to have the nectar you hold, they literally hop onto your hand and remove the lid for you. Since we had been conservative with our cup of pellets, we were able to make a second round with the donkeys, deer, goats, ostrich and sheep before we both ran out.

That led to something I never thought I’d do in the middle of the desert Southwest — pet and feed Stingrays. They are so smooth and silky, yet gentle in the way they suck squid from you, I instantly wanted to take one home.

Instead I settled for a medium plush one from the gift shop and aptly named him Sly.

— The Impostor