Colorado, Part 3

The last day in Colorado, Mr X and I stopped at an Alligator Farm on our way home. It was pretty bizarre to see. You drive through the middle of nowhere and suddenly you are at this man-made gator farm where they are raising hundreds of alligators. Apparently some of the them were even movie stars in their younger days like this one:

I forget what movies he was in, but I wasn't so much impressed with his acting abilities as I was with the sheer size of him. I think he was something like 600 pounds or so. (You don't quite get that from the picture, I know.)

Anyway, They take a picture of you when you walk in and they have you hold a little baby alligator. Mr X tried to get me to hold it and I was going to be all brave and stuff but once I got one hand on his tail I kind of freaked out. And then I promptly chickened out. (He was surprisingly warm and squishy - and that doesn't pair well with scaly in my mind.) So they handed the little guy to Mr X and said, "Just be careful to make sure his jaws are pointed away from you." Then they snapped this picture:
Here are the rest of the pictures from this adventure:

Apparently once or twice a year they actually have alligator wrangling days where regular guys can come try to sit on the gators and stuff. I have no idea why anyone would want to, but there were pictures up of this one guy that comes every year. One unfortunate year he had a slip up and ended up losing part of a finger. (Yes they show a picture of him holding his missing chunk of finger in his hand.) He quickly headed to the hospital and had it put back on but then came back to do some more gator wrangling. I guess the whole experience must be really fulfilling for him if he's that much of a die-hard about it. I just think he's crazy.