Lions and tigers and gators..oh my!

We went to the movies last night to catch the new movie "Marley and Me". It was hysterically funny for most of the movie but, if you've read the book, you know the ending is sad. I think the whole movie theater was in tears by the time the credits rolled. It was a great movie though and I'd like to read the book now, since the book always has more to the story than Hollywood's version.

I was up pretty early this morning with Jill the Wonder Dog. Travis and Shayna slept for a little longer before facing the new day. Later we went to Gatorland up towards Orlando-way. It was pretty interesting and much larger than I thought it would be. I was envisioning a small preserve but this place had hundreds of gators of all ages. You could buy a six-pack of hot dogs for $2 and feed the gators but the birds made off with the pieces before the gators could lazily swim to where they had fallen. The younger gators were more food-motivated and I thought a cormorant or snake bird was about to lose a leg several different times. Those slender feet were the same color as the hot dogs so it wouldn't have been a stretch of imagination. It's no wonder the birds were being cautious about where they stepped! It was about the only time they were cautious...

Also featured were some really REALLY large tortoises. They are on the endangered list and from somewhere in Africa. One was 500 lbs and the other 600 lbs. You could pay $5 to feed them a few carrots and scratch their heads. The kids loved it! We visited the small petting zoo where some very rude goats greedily snatched food out of our hands. They completely ignored my comments on sharing the goods. Typical goats... I was a little startled at the appearance of a few of them...no horns and no ears! I immediately thought they were rescued goats from an abusive farm but no...that's how their breed appear (regarding the ears anyway). They had been deliberately dehorned.

We wandered past the exotic bird cage and many more enclosures with reptiles, crocodiles and gators from other countries. Morton and Sheila were two crocs from "Down Under". They were huge! We watched Morton snag some fish while floating along the bottom of his enclosure. He must like the attention because he surfaced right by the fence and burped his fish dinner for everyone before staring at us for awhile. I stared back from the safety of my fenced perch with the words from Jaws running through my mind...."their eyes were black..." Ok, so Morton's eyes weren't black but I got the feeling that if any humans were within reach, they'd be Morton food just as quickly.

We watched a few shows - an educational show with a handler "wrestling"a gator in front a of a large audience and talking about gators in general...especially emphasizing that if one starts to chase you, you should just run very quickly because a human can out run a gator. The second show was a little more entertainment with handlers dangling raw chicken above the water to get a gator to jump into the air for it. I wasn't as entertained as others because it seemed rather demeaning but I know that some places like this have to exist in order to do good for all gators in Florida.

After a long day we headed back to Tampa, a bobble-head turtle safely tucked away in my bag so it can join the other one I purchased on a previous visit.