everglades airboat ride

no trip to southern florida would be complete without an airboat ride through the alligator infested everglades!  now what part of that doesn't sound fun?  it is a lot of fun actually.  you can get really close to the gators, a safe kind of close, if there is such a thing.  we came across 3, i think, on our ride, and it was the time of day when you don't see many.  they have night tours and can see tons of gators in every direction.  

one of them was really close to us, and just hanging out for the longest time, then, the driver wanted to scare him away, so we got super close to him and he swam off so fast!  it's a pretty cool ride, they tell you all about the everglades and how it's a river, not swamp, and how they're trying to protect the land.  it's also the main source for drinking water in ft. lauderdale, needless to say, i'll be buying a very good brita!  all the water in the toilets and stuff are yellow from the rotting vegetation in the water, but they say it's totally healthy...

can you see him in there?  right in the middle, they are so hard to spot!

so local birds and the trees they brought in a long time ago to try and dry up the everglades.  now they have to cut them down in a special way so they don't release their pollen, to restore only native vegetation.

they also have a wildlife 'zoo' area, with all sorts of different animals.  they have baby gators, that you can hold (beth did it this time, i held one last summer).  then they have enormous gators, one up to 18 feet!  they even have one that was captured from a drug traffickers house, you can only imagine what he's had to eat!

they also have pigs, and turtles, snapping turtles, bunnies, peacocks, wolves and all different kinds of birds.  it's funny because all their animals are 'lojacked' just in case you try to steal one.  what has this world come to?

(this bird was biting her nail!)

(that's for you sumi)

but then they have some amazingly beautiful (from behind the fence) black leopards.  they are so graceful and just amazing!  they were enjoying a light dinner of raw chicken (we could hear them crunching the bones with every bite!).