Roer's Safari

Roer's Zoofari is a family zoo located at 1228 Hunter Mill Road, Reston, Virginia, United States. It covers an area of 30 acres and contains a petting barn and allows visitors to go on safari wagon rides around the park. It contains lambs, ostriches, camels, monkeys, zebras, bisons, ducks, goats, horses and buffalos. It also has a reptile house and alligators.HistoryIn 1975, local developer and entrepreneur Mack Slye "Jack" Crippen Jr. opened the Pet-A-Pet Farm on a 60-acre parcel he owned near Lake Fairfax Park, which he had developed in the 1960s and later sold to Fairfax County. Crippen had been a collector of exotic animals for a few years, and the closing of the American Broadcasting Company's 280-acre Largo Wildlife Preserve in Prince George's County, Maryland and the availability of its menagerie was the trigger for his venture.After operating Pet-A-Pet for a few years and losing nearly $200,000 in the venture, Crippen decided to close it in 1978, selling off or giving away most of the 500 animals at the petting zoo. The last animal to be rehomed was a 17-year-old female Asian elephant named "Topsy", who originally supposed to be sent to the Portland Zoo in February 1979, but the deal fell through and Topsy instead wound up in a circus, where she was euthanized after injuring a trainer.