OH OH..........a tasty morsel walking by......
Today we went to Insta-Gator. It's a 20 year old enterprise (1 of 40 in LA) that harvests about 1500 wild alligator eggs annually, hatches them in August, raises them for 2 years until they are 4' long, then releases 14% back into the wild (only 6% of the eggs hatch & survive in the wild on their own). The other 86% are used for food and leather to support the business. This was a very interesting hour & a half we spent there learning why and how this is done. An ultralight plane is used to locate nests then marked with a flag so the swamp air boats can find them. Imagine digging through rotting swamp grass (with fire ants, snakes, various bugs, & vermin inside) looking for 30 to 50 eggs in a nest. Now, mom is lurking around somewhere and she's about 8' long and VERY protective of her nest. He said if you can see her that's great, when you can't see her you have a serious problem. One even snuck up under him between his legs as he was gathering eggs. The eggs have to be marked on the top, if you turn them upside down they will die. It was interesting when he put 2 mice in a tank full of alligators, we got to feed them marshmallows. He said they aren't too smart, all their small brains think of is swimming and food. It was very interesting.......
