The Great Gatorland Get-Away

En route from Melbourne to Tampa, I made a stop at a classic Florida attraction: Gatorland!

Gatorland opened its doors in 1949 as the creation of  Owen Goodwin.  It's part theme park, part wildlife refuge.  Gatorland offers a water park for the kids (w/o alligators) and gator wrestling shows, but there's also plenty of education about the wildlife of Florida going on as well.  Thousands of alligators call the 110 acre park home.

Immediately inside the park were enclosures where the gators were separated by size (and therefor age).  It's was cool the day I visited, the high was around 60 degrees, so the alligators were all piled up sunning themselves.  The gators are separated by size as bigger alligators have been known to eat smaller, younger alligators.

All manner of other creatures call the park home.  These turtles and a wood stork were quite comfortable next to the gators.

One of the big attractions at Gatorland is the alligator wrestling show.  Billed as "Cracker-style" wrestling as the practice evolved from Florida cowhands, known as "crackers" for the sound of their cracking whips, who had to remove alligators from water holes to keep the cattle safe.  The show featured a Gatorland employee and a 7 or 8 foot reptile.  The wrestler pulled the gator up onto the sand and climbed astride before demonstrating how to subdue the beast.  The jaws of an alligator have immense crushing power, but the muscles that open its mouth are not nearly as strong.  In fact, the wrangler was easily able to keep the gator's mouth closed with one hand!  He also demonstrated how alligators are able to retract their eyes back into their heads.  This allows a gator to swim with just its eyes above the surface of the water and not worry about low hanging branches or grab fighting prey in its jaws without worrying about the thrashing prey blinding the predator.  

The other show at Gatorland is entitled "Gator Jumparoo!"  As the name implies, the idea is get the biggest alligators in the pond to leap from the water.  The animals are lured with pieces of chicken first and then whole chickens for the finale.  As alligators are cold-blooded, they weren't feeling very frisky in the cooler temperatures and didn't come very far out of the water the day I was there.  Still and all, a person feeding meat to a 12' alligator by hand was pretty impressive!  (The trainers wear safety belts to keep the animals from pulling them into the water, but a miscalculation could still result in serious injury.)

3 feet is about as far as the beasts were willing to exert themselves

Most of the inhabitants of Gatorland live in the breeding marsh in the middle of the property.  This big lagoon is chock full of mature alligators.  They roam about freely, mating and building nests when the time comes.  The marsh is also home to lots of wading birds.  The birds like to nest near gators as the presence of the giant carnivores keeps smaller predators, like possums and raccoons away.  The gators mostly leave the bigger birds alone, but there's always the risk that their young will fall from the nest and become a snack.

This heron was right at home alongside the big gators

In addition to the native Florida alligators, several other species of Crocodilia call Gatorland home.  Salt water crocs and Nile Crocs were on display as were white alligators from Louisiana.  The white alligators are not albinos, in fact their eyes are bright blue!  These giants just have a genetic mutation that prevents them from secreting the melatonin that keeps them brown; they're known as leucustic alligators.  The gators on display at Gatorland are on loan from the aquarium that rescued them as hatchlings in the Louisiana swamps.  The hatchlings were collected in 1987 as part of a plan to help rebuild the alligator population.  It is thought that the white gators are so rare because the white hatchlings would be an easy target for hawks.

The highlight of the afternoon was my encounter with an alligator:

This little fellow (they told me he was a boy) was amazing!  He was available to pose for photos (as was a snake that I declined to get involved with) for a small fee and I just couldn't resist.  Yes, his mouth is taped shut; his handler said it doesn't hurt him and even though he's small, he has 86 sharp little teeth.  After I sat down, his handler presented him to me and I immediately started to laugh - I was holding a live alligator!  He was heavy (alligators are mostly muscle) and COLD (since they're ectothermic).  He quietly posed for the picture while I continued to laugh.  The woman taking the picture paused and said, "Are you going to be OK?"  Just as I answered, "YES!" she snapped the photo above.  Too soon, they were taking him back from me, but I was allowed to touch him in his terrarium.   It still makes me smile to think about holding an alligator.

I collected my photo and was on my way to Tampa and load-in not too long after.  As we loaded-in the big skit, I ran around showing everyone my photo and recounting my afternoon with the alligators - an "only in Florida" experience!

JV