Alligator Adventure

Yesterday, we took a trip down to Barefoot Landing and went exploring. We've been wanting to go to Alligator Adventure for a while, so we finally got the chance to fit in a nice relaxing day of wandering around wooden walkways surrounded by alligators.

At Alligator Adventure, the main attraction is - you guessed it, Alligators! They also have turtles, some lizards, as well as crocodiles. When we first got in, we checked out the juvenile feeding pond, where they do demonstrations with little alligators as well as some snakes. Here is a shot of the young alligators all piled up.

After the show, we got the opportunity to wander around the park. I'm sure that this is possibly the scariest thing that I could see if I walked out of my house and saw this guy sitting underneath my tree. 

We also caught a glimpse of this big guy, up close and personal. I thought that I could probably smuggle him out under my shirt, but I think he's pretty heavy. His shell was so hard and smooth, but if you touch their hand, they're kind of squishy and scaly. He was really relaxed and hardly moved, even with me hanging out right next to him.

We also saw one of the two "feeding areas", where a bunch of alligators were cooling off in the shade. You could have hopped the fence here, and gotten down in there with them, but I can't imagine anyone would want to! There were a lot more of them around this area, but this one was by far the biggest of the bunch.

When we were walking along, we came upon a big enclosure, which was labeled King Alligator. This alligator was huge! When we got up there, everyone else in the park was heading towards the feeding pen for the 3pm feeding, so we were the only one around. You can actually get pretty close to the fence, and we were close enough where he opened his jaws and kind of growled at us. Scary!

 Next up - an Albino Alligator! This is pretty crazy! The two in the enclosure never moved at all, so we wondered for a while whether they were even alive, but we think we saw them breathe, and no one wanted to volunteer to climb on in and check.

I took a video of feeding time, but it's really hard to see through the chain link fence. Tidbit of advice from the Alligator Adventure feeder: Like stray dogs and husbands, once you start feeding them, they keep coming back. Once alligators lose their natural fear of humans, they think everyone will feed them. If you don't, that's when the problems happen.

As we were leaving, we stopped by the vet clinic, where we happened upon - a bunch of baby alligators! 

All in all, we spent a couple of hours within the park, and really enjoyed our time there. It was great to get to see them all, even if I wouldn't want to meet any of them up close and personal.