Why you should consider hopping a short flight to your next weekend getaway destination.

Hollie Colahan isn’t your typical animal-lover: Working at zoos from Houston to Orlando, Colahan has bottle-fed baby cheetahs and tended to agitated animals during hurricanes. Now, as the Denver Zoo’s large mammal curator, she helped facilitate a deal with the royal family of Qatar to bring a trio of young lions to Denver—the zoo’s first cubs since 2006.