Grandma and Grandpa treated us to a visit to the gator capital of the world called Gatorland in Orlando,FL. At any time there are near 4,000 gators divided by size and age. The 14 foot gators literally look like dinosaurs. Gatorland also has a section of rare white leucistic gators with blue eyes and a section of crocodiles. The leucistic gator’s blue eyes almost made the gator less scary and hideous until we found out gators blow bubbles out of their eyeballs underwater before leaping. It then felt pretty foolish gazing into them. I never realized just how many humans have died in the jaws of crocodiles! The security fencing around these guys was built real high.

We were surprised to see gator bites for sale at the cafe. We discovered that Gatorland accepts problem gators from the state and funds itself by tourism and selling the gators for meat and skin. It is literally a gator farm. It is really hard to feel compassion for these reptiles though.

Gatorland had pretty awesome animal shows and taught us about local snakes and spiders. Some poor crowd volunteer had a tarantula set on her open hand! She handled it much better than I would have….Gatorland also had daredevil gator shows where they did just plain stupid/shocking stunts with the gators. They must make enough money on gator bites to pay the stunt men a fortune! The “Look Mom no hands” line is funny when a little boy is on a bike with training wheels…

Gatorland also had a petting zoo and the kids loved feeding the animals and bravely touched the snakes.

We fed beautiful birds at the Gatorland aviary.

We took a tour of the park on the train, went for a beautiful swamp walk on a boardwalk and learned about the swamp and native ecosystem as we went. The signs in the park were slapstick humerous and also informative.

We have so much to celebrate! An endless cheers to good health and beautiful family.