The Great Skunk Ape Hunt 2008

Carla and I finally made it back to the Skunk Ape Headquarters! We embraced the cheeziness and had a really great time. Plenty of pictures with the big monkey statues.






We played with lots of critters including this adorable baby alligator. No rubber band on his mouth. No risk at all. The birds were not in good spirits today so we didn't handle them. They went on "time out" within 2 minutes of our interaction. But Carla was flirting with this cutie Macaw who had a little crush on her.



We made more attention to snakes on this visit than I had on my previous visit. Rick (the animal keeper) just opened the pens so we could get could pictures. Sounded great until he wondered off to take care of other things. But the snakes weren't really that active and didn't chase us down or anything. The snakes were huge though. Some of the smaller ones weighed about 60 lbs, many of them significantly larger. Before we left this yello monster got pretty active.









They also had some big gators, turtles, and emus in the back. This particular emu posed very nice for me and I got a couple of pretty cool pictures of him. Doesn't he remind you of one of the characters from "The Dark Crystal".



I got a handful of really good pictures of this guy but he always looks a little evil, lol!



Our second stop for the day was the Big Cypress National Preserve. Got some great pictures here. Saw some deer, turtles, woodstorks, kingfishers, woodpeckers, fish, and some cool looking swamp trees. Along the road throughout the entire drive of the everglades are gators. Big ones, small ones, really big ones.... About ever 30 feet, there was another gator. We stopped and grabbed a couple of great pictures.





Turtles on a log!

Just a pretty pic!
Deer on the side of the road!

Lots of gators...

And for a little bonus: If you've ever wanted to see what a turtle feeding frenzy looked like, here is your chance...