It was only about 20 minutes away from our hotel, but closes at 5pm, so we grabbed some breakfast and headed over there as early as we could. Yesterday I noticed a bunch of travel brochures in the hotel lobby for boat tours and cruises to see alligators in the swamps. I asked the concierge about them and he said that if we could only do one thing, we should go see Gatorland. So, here we go.
The first thing that greeted us at Gatorland was a giant alligator mouth out front.
At the entrance gate, we opted for the extra package that included rookie gator wrestling and food to feed the gators and crocodiles. She recommended that we head to the Gator Wrestling show that was going to start in 30 minutes, so we looked at all the animals we passed as we made our way to the show. They had tons of alligators and crocodiles from the tiny babies to the very large adults. They had leucistic alligators (white gators that are not albino - they had blue eyes and sometimes small spots of color), a big and mean gator named Chester who was rescued and brought here because he kept eating people's dogs, a myriad of snakes and lizards, and a petting zoo and aviary that we'd come back and visit later.
The Gator Wrestling Show was so great! One of the park workers dragged an alligator that was about 7ft long out of the water, sat on it, and then held its mouth shut (it sounds simpler than it was). He talked a little bit about the gator and the history of wrestling alligators, but mostly the show was filled with wit and humor and his timing was spot on. We were all laughing out loud during the whole show as he dodged the snapping jaws and posed for the cameras.
He demonstrated how the bottom jaw is the one that opens by balancing his chin on the gator's top jaw. He got snapped at twice doing this before quitting.
One of the girls' favorite parts of the show was when he made the gator 'go to sleep' on his back. The gator just laid like this for a long time, perfectly still. He even yelled right in the gator's face and it didn't flinch. Only when he walked over and tickled the gator on its tummy did it finally flip back over and crawl away.
After the show, it was the girls' turn to wrestle a gator. Well, actually, the staff had already wrestled a gator and taped his mouth shut and you could just sit on his back and hold his head up. C and A were not going in there (maybe we should have done it before the show), but K went in hesitantly and wrestled that gator.
And then Mike had a turn.
After the gator-wrestlin, we made our way to the aviary where the girls took some more time feeding the nice, safe little birds.
And then we made our way to the Gator Jumparoo show, where two guys held whole chickens over the railing and the gators jumped out of the water to snatch them up.
In this second photo, you can see the same guy who wrestled the gator also doing this show (in the yellow shirt). We also noticed that the guy who handed C and K the snake (see below) in the Up Close Encounters show was the same guy who drove the steam train when we took a ride around the park later in the day. The whole park had a very sideshow/circus feel to it with a small staff, but they were very personable and friendly and the park was laid out very well with tons of stuff to see and do. I would definitely recommend this park to anyone. We had so much fun there!
C & K holding a Burmese python at the Up Close Encounters show
We headed back to the breeding marsh to see some of the bigger gators. There isn't any eggs out there because the staff collects them and raises them in the nursery. In the wild, the eggs only have a 10% survival rate, partially due to other adults eating the eggs, but in the nursery they have a 90% survival rate, so they collect all of the eggs and raise the babies away from the adults.
We did see baby birds and lots of birds on nests in the breeding marsh, though
We had already paid for food for the gators (which turned out to be turkey hot dogs), so we picked them up and headed to feed the gators and crocs. It was actually much harder than we expected because the storks and other big birds in the area would steal it from the gators, and the gators and crocs were slow and clumsy eaters.
The hot dog is sitting right next to his head. The birds got most of them and the turtles got a few, too. I guess they don't really see very well and their 'snaps' for the hot dogs missed about half the time.
Our admission tickets also came with a free ride on the train allowing us to tour the back half of the park quickly and see the big crocs. We also learned about the history of the park and that when they first opened in the 1950's, they used to sell baby gators in the gift shop for $1. C went crazy when he mentioned that!
We walked around a little more and got one last look at all the gators before the park closed. Then we spent a long time in the gift shop looking for the perfect souvenir. C settled on a preserved alligator head (of course!) and K got a white stuffed alligator toy. Mike and I grabbed some alligator jerky and a few odds and ends, and then we headed out.
Because we were done so early in the day, today was a good day to get some laundry done, so we spent the next couple of hours doing laundry at a nearby laundromat. After that, the girls decided that Mike needed to try Waffle House. I think he was surprised that it wasn't as horrible as he imagined, and the girls were loving going back for more waffles, sitting at the counter ordering by themselves, and choosing songs to play in the jukebox.
Before we headed to get some sleep, we had to make one more stop. I needed to mail The Book back home. It was overdue at the library because someone else had requested it, and I felt like I had all the information I needed for our trip to Disney World. We had to drive 20 minutes to get to the nearest post office to send it off. Sorry to whoever had to wait an extra 5 days to get it!
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