See Ya Later, Alligator

Up until today, the Florida Gators have just been a sports team in my mind. Now, they are large, scaly things with ginormous, crooked teeth and small bladders. (That one will be explained.)

First thing this morning -- after beautiful sunrise pictures I'll have to share at a later date -- we hopped a shuttle out to Holiday Park in the Everglades. Our tickets included an airboat ride to be followed by an alligator-handling show of some sort.

The airboat ride took us around all kinds of canals and routes in the tall grass of this eco-landmark of the south. I don't know where we went or how we made it back. I'm just glad we did!

At first we were cruising along slowly, looking around, then our "captain" said he was going to put some speed on "so hold on!" Well that was fine until he sort of zig-zagged a bit and I felt like we were going to tumble into the water! Now I don't mind doing that on a lake in Wisconsin where my worst enemy may be a snapping turtle. But the prospect of getting dumped into water infested (at some level) with gators and 25 species of snakes native to the Glades was intimidating. Well, downright frightening. I only screamed a teeny bit. Didn't want to call attention to myself if the gators where listening nearby.

That was the only scary, scary part. A little less scary -- but just as cool! -- was sidling up to a gator in the water and taking a picture or 2 or 3. My hands were a bit shaky so I'll be lucky any of those pictures turn out! I got a few good ones. We ended up seeing 3 grown-up gators and one baby one. Not bad.

Also saw millions of lily pads, several vultures and other native birds and, thankfully, no snakes.

Afterwards, we were treated to an alligator show where the handler was a cross between Steve the former Crocodile Hunter guy and Crocodile Dundee. He dragged a gator out of the pen and opened his mouth for all of us to see, then did some potentially hazardous and life-threatening tricks. Got pictures of that!

Then we all got to pet a muzzled baby alligator and could, for a price, hold it! We decided to let Carter and Nate take a shot at that. Apparently our northwoods smell made him nervous, because the gator peed on Nate as soon as he started holding him. Probably a good thing he has a small bladder (the gator, not Nate) because he was well behaved and house broken for Carter. Got pictures of that, too!

Yes, I can see my scrapbooking pages piling up before me. And it's only Monday!!

And that is a good thing. A great thing! OK, back to vacation...

See ya later, Alligator!