Gatorland!

I've never seen so many alligators!  The only alligator I've actually been near has been the white alligator they had at the zoo a couple years ago.  Well I saw a few white alligators and over a hundred other alligators today.  It was so amazing to see how lethargic they seem.  A few times we got to see them more active when they were dangling chicken over them and when we were throwing chunks of meat to them but overall they are pretty slow moving.  It was interesting to me how they would just be totally content laying on top of one another.  We paid to feed the gators.  This seemed uneventful until they had us pose in front of the gators for a photo.  Our nerves were a little on edge.  You can see in the photos we freaked out a few times before finally calming down to get the photo.  It was just so unnerving because you couldn't see what those big guys were doing behind you and the one directly behind us had been pushed back at least a dozen times because he kept getting too close.  He was determined to get where we were and so we were a little scared.  We also paid to get our picture taken while sitting on a gator--which reminds me I never got that from Megan :(.   I wasn't thinking it was as thrilling as it sounded until the little girl in front of me straddled the gator like everyone before her and it started flailing.  They quickly removed her and calmed it down and then got a different alligator to sit in the photos.  That made me a little nervous to go saddle up. :)  They also had some exotic birds that were very fun to see.  I'd never seen a flamingo before and so that was really fun to see a whole flock of them.  There were a few little birds, I'm not sure what kind they were, that hung out with the alligators and would even walk on them.  I was shocked to see that the alligators didn't even attempt to eat them.  They didn't care at all that they were right in front of them.  Speaking of birds, we were walking along and a peacock just appeared in front of us.  He fanned out his feathers and strutted, and spun around.  We were laughing talking about how neat it was that he was trained to put on this show and one of the workers interrupted us and said he was a wild peacock he was just putting on a show because a wild hen was behind us.  We turned around and sure enough we were in the middle of the love birds.  One thing was a sad reality was to see some of the gators chewed up from other gators.  The workers said they often get gators that are just more aggressive and so they have to isolate them or move them to another facility.