Florida - Day Five
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
The 2 sides of Zoe...
Part 1 - Zoe the Alligator Wrangler
We spent the morning at Jungle Adventures Nature Park. We weren't quite sure what it was... but my dad had been wanting to check out "Swampy... the world's largest alligator." It ended up being a nice little zoo, with local Florida animals.
We saw TONS of alligators. I was pretty amazed with how close we were to the alligators.
The Florida Panthers were all just lounging around.
Zoe loved feeding the turtles. They had 3 or 4 different kinds of turtles... and she was happy to feed them all.
We were able to watch one of the zoo workers hand feed some of the alligators. She mostly just dropped them pieces of meat, but she was able to get one to jump up out of the water so she could drop the meat in it's mouth. I was upset I missed that picture. It's whole body was up out of the water.
We went of the "jungle cruise" were we were able to capture glimpses of quite a few alligators. The green stuff coating the top of the water was actually not algae or slime. We were told it was call duckweed. When you looked at it closely you could see it was made of tons of tiny leaves. Even after I found out what it was... it still looked slimy.
This alligator was "sun bathing". As soon as our boat came close it jumped right into the water in front of our boat. The driver slowed the boat... but we felt the alligator bump along under us as she made it out the other side.
I don't think I've ever seen so many alligators.
After our boat ride we went to feed the baby alligators. This was done by sticking a 1/2 hot dog on the end of fishing pole.
We also walked around and saw peacocks, some types of deer, an ostrich, some crocodile and a few dozen more alligators. There were also bears and monkeys... but we didn't make it to that area before Zoe was wiped out and ready to leave.
We went to a little informative talk where we were told we could hold and alligator. Zoe insisted repeatedly that she wanted to hold the alligator. Right up until it was her turn she kept exclaiming "I need to hold it! I need to hold it!" She was absolutely thrilled to hold the baby alligator... and if it was up to her I think it may have come home with us. (My kid was afraid of Mickey Mouse... but wants an alligator for a pet. Go figure.)
Zoe was a little upset that she only got to pet the python snake. She REALLY wanted to hold that too.
On our way out we stopped for a picture of Zoe inside of Swampy the Alligator. Roadside America says that this is the largest alligator ever built.
Part 2 - Zoe the Princess
We went over to my brother's house for dinner. While we were waiting for Jim to come home from work with our pizza dinner Zoe had a great time playing with Avery. The major hit of the evening... Avery introduced Zoe to her make-up vanity.
Zoe really liked having Avery put on her make-up. The both had sparkles everywhere, and one purple eye and one pink eye and some lip gloss.
It didn't end with make-up though. No princess is complete without princess-wear.
So in one day Zoe was surrounded by alligators and later was covered in princess. I'm not quite sure which one scares me more. The idea that my daughter just LOVES reptiles... or the idea that my daughter may soon be part of the princess obsessed crowd. Do you think there's any chance I can avoid both sides of her?