Nature’s Creek Zoo is home to exotic animals like the Bengal cat, pictured here. Lauren Scott | Collegian

After following a dirt road with signs pointing me toward Nature’s Creek Zoo, I arrived at a house that looked more fitting to be a farm than a petting zoo. Looking for a place to purchase tickets, I knocked on the door.

“We’re here for the zoo,” I said. 

Owner Peggy Evola answered the door. She then gave me a tour of the zoo just south of Frontier, which features 200 animals from several countries including Brazil, India, and Mexico. 

Despite its impressive array of animals, Nature’s Creek isn’t an ordinary zoo. It’s in Evola’s 35-acre backyard. Camels graze across from the swimming pool. Come winter, its garage will be a heated shelter for the animals. 

“For the fall, we’re getting a hay wagon ready,” Evola said. “We’re gonna take you through the pasture and let you feed the animals right out of the wagon.” 

Nature’s Creek Zoo opened Sept. 1, but its roots go back to 1998 when Evola and her husband Richard started a pet store. It soon grew into a traveling exhibit as the couple brought their animals to fairs and festivals in Michigan.

But now they are staying in one place: Hillsdale County. 

“We’d be gone a week at a time and then finally we found this place, and I said, ‘I’m tired of traveling,’” Evola said. 

Evola bought the current property in 2015 and turned an empty hay field into Nature’s Creek Zoo.

“We kept collecting poles and used fences,” Evola said. “People would say, ‘Oh, I have a fence. If you take it down, we’ll let you have it for free.’ We worked our butts off to get where we are. It’s been a long haul.”  

Evola said they get their animals from many different places, including as rescues.

“I tell everybody we are a rescue with no questions asked,” she said. “The only stipulation I have is you call first and let me know you’re coming.”

Evola said her love for children inspired her to open the zoo. 

“We’re trying to be educational for the schools,” she said. “We take animals out and let you actually make contact and pet them.”

Nature’s Creek Zoo will allow pre-K schools to book appointments at the zoo, or the zoo can travel to schools, according to Evola. 

The zoo is home to ringtail lemurs from Madagascar, Valais, sheep from Switzerland, and black swans from Australia. It even has a baby alligator that children can hold. 

When the little lemurs climbed the walls of their home, it brought back childhood memories of the television show “Zaboomafoo.” I wondered if lemurs were friendly animals like the Kratt Brothers convinced me they were, and Evola was reassuring. 

“Talk about sweet,” she said. “They are all over me — just adorable.” 

Across from the lemurs reside the Sulcata tortoises, living in their home that looks like a giant sandbox. Evola said  people are welcome to pet their shells but not their heads. 

“Not that they would bite you,” she said. “It’s just if you had your hand on the head and they draw in their shell, it pulls you in too, and I don’t want you to get pinched.”

Evola said she hopes the zoo will be a place for the community to gather, but if not, she and her husband will still enjoy the animals. 

“People will say, ‘Isn’t it time to reap some kind of benefit?’,” Evola said. “Well, we’ll see. If not, it’ll just be for us.”