Reptilia

We had an AMAZING time at Reptilia yesterday. It was much bigger than I expected and there was much more to do there than the website had indicated. Shaun had a terrific time and was so excited to leave Aaron and Melissa's house. Bailey rode with us and both boys sang and played goofy games the whole 1 1/2 hour drive.


We watched a lizard show and had the chance to touch a few different lizards but Shaun was too scared to even look at them as they came down the aisle and instead cowered in my sleeve. But he enthusiastically watched a king cobra and then a python eat a rat and stood for 10 minutes watching juvenile American aligators get fed. He thought it was pretty neat that they eat rats. Dead - of course - but freaky nonetheless. And... then the battery on the camera died. Damn, I was so upset. There were so many terrific photo opps. (is that how you'd spell it?) and I missed out on them. Hopefully Melissa will send some along.


One of the female pythons had laid some eggs just yesterday morning but the keepers hadn't been in to her pen yet to count exactly how many. They did tell us that the last time she laid eggs there were 77. Yep. My jaw dropped too. I asked what they do with all the eggs and the keeper told me that they hatch the eggs and raise up the young in the nursery and wait for other zoos or pet stores to buy the babies. And if they don't get purchased, they get fed to the king cobras. Apparently the king cobra is too smart to eat dead-pre-frozen-then-thawed rats so they have to feed it live snakes to keep it alive. Lovely, at least they do this after-hours. Although I'm sure it would be quite the show! They should charge extra admission just for those occasions.