WYOMING, Mich. — For many six-year-olds, a typical birthday wish might be for a new toy or perhaps a video game. But Oliver Thaxton’s birthday wish is to help save an endangered species.

Thaxton celebrated his sixth birthday on Wednesday. His mom, Aliza Thaxton, said his love for tigers started with a book she borrowed from the library.

“We were reading about how [tigers are] endangered, and it was nighttime when we read about it,” Thaxton said. “All night, [Oliver] kept coming into my room -- ‘mommy, I can't sleep. I want to save the tigers. I'm going to fly there and I'm going to protect them … I'm going to watch them and make sure nobody hurts them.’”

So Thaxton started to think about how to make her son’s birthday wish come true. She decided that her family could raise money to help

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