It's a Wild Life: How My Life Became a Zoo

Pursuing your passion includes a whole lot of crap. For Bud DeYoung, that’s about two hundred pounds a day!

Since childhood, Bud had a passion for animals. As an adult, that passion led to the rescue of a bear who lived in his family’s house, then more animals crowding for space, until Bud eventually built an entire private zoo around his home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Along the way, a regular visitor named Carrie joined her passion for animals with Bud’s. Together they now educate the public about animal conservation, battle the harsh winters and blazing summers, and daily dole out love to the hundreds of rescued animals in their care. Meanwhile, they teach by example how to make the world a better place while pursuing their passion.

Welcome to the fascinating, heartwarming journey of one man, one woman, and an amazing cast of critters, whose stories will warm your soul. Welcome to the wild life of the DeYoung Family Zoo.

Bud DeYoung Since childhood, Bud DeYoung had a passion for animals. At the young age of eight, he brought kids home from school to see his little zoo. When Bud was fifteen, he traded the family beagle for a monkey. This was the beginning.

Today on his own property in Michican’s Upper Peninsula, Bud runs a zoo that has been open to the public since 1988 and is featured in a television series called My Life Is a Zoo on Nat Geo WILD and the 2012 independent film Zooman. Along with “Big Cat” Carrie, Bud cares for over two hundred happy critters, from Bengal tigers to arctic wolves to a very hungry hippo named Wallace. Together Bud and Carrie educate the public about animal conservation, battle harsh winters and blazing summers, and daily dole out love to the hundreds of animals in their care. Through Bud and Carrie’s daily sacrifice, animals find rescue, people are inspired, and Bud DeYoung and Carrie Cramer know the fulfillment of living and building upon their dreams.

You can visit Bud and Carrie at the DeYoung Family Zoo in Wallace, Michigan, and online at TheDeYoungFamilyZoo.com.

Cindy Martinusen Coloma is a best-selling author and has written 12 novels including Beautiful (2010 Christy Award Finalist and 2011 Revolve Book of the Year), The Salt Garden (Library Journal's Best Books 2004) Orchid House (2008 ECPA bestseller) and Winter Passing (2001 Christy Award Finalist), as well as several non-fiction books and over 100 published articles.

Cindy lives in Redding, California with her husband and four children.

Part One The Passion
Chapter One Early Rising
Chapter Two The Call of the Wild
Chapter Three Stepping Forward
Chapter Four Chimp Rescues
Chapter Five Passion in Pain
Chapter Six Good-byes and New Beginnings
Chapter Seven Moving North
Chapter Eight Building Life and Facing Antlers
Chapter Nine Love of Bears

Part Two The Price
Chapter Ten The Sign
Chapter Eleven Winter’s Sting
Chapter Twelve The Big Step Out
Chapter Thirteen Big Cat Carrie
Chapter Fourteen Mishaps and Learning Curves
Chapter Fifteen Fifteen Minutes of Fame
Chapter Sixteen An African Hippo in the Upper Peninsula
Chapter Seventeen Real Structure for Real Dreams
Chapter Eighteen The Strength of a Backbone
Chapter Nineteen Letting Go
Chapter Twenty Regrets and Moving On

Part Three The Purpose
Chapter Twenty-one Hope in the Air
Chapter Twenty-two The Wolf Test
Chapter Twenty-three Wolf Pack
Chapter Twenty-four The Three-Legged Wolf
Chapter Twenty-five Nala the “Pet” Lioness
Chapter Twenty-six Saving Lost Causes
Chapter Twenty-seven Animal Swaps and Bud’s Birds
Chapter Twenty-eight The Rescues
Chapter Twenty-nine And They Kept Coming
Chapter Thirty Saving Bob and Gunther
Chapter Thirty-one The Haitian Priest
Chapter Thirty-two New Ideas and Other Zoos
Chapter Thirty-three How It All Comes Back
Chapter Thirty-four Beyond Our Dreams

Letters from Our Visitors