Palmer's Place: East Texas Gator Farm Visit

On Monday, we went to a Gator Farm in Grand Saline, which is about 90 minutes from where Austin lives. It is near Tyler, where Landon served part of his mission. It was a beautiful drive!

I took these pictures from the window in the car. The grass was so green and all the trees have leaves. In Colorado, it is still winter. The grass is yellow-brown, and no leaves.

Here are we!

There is a gift shop and some animals are inside. This is a ferret that we could pet. It was very soft.

The owners had this big white dog that was running around the gift shop and the property the whole time we were there. Camille petted him and loved on him whenever he would lay down.

Snakes! Yikes!

Claire and Camille weren't afraid of it. Britta and Ryan wouldn't come anywhere near.

Just to prove how brave I am, I had a turn! A few years ago, I would never have touched a snake with a stick, let alone hold one. They aren't slimy, but do feel smooth and cool.

I only looked up for one quick second to take the first picture. I kept my eye on that snake--I didn't want him to try and crawl up my arm!

Melissa's turn.

Good thing Delwyn isn't afraid of anything! We always trust him to take care of us.

This is the only snake Ryan and Britta will touch, a big stuffed animal.

Another soft animal to pet.

The owner got an alligator out of the aquarium for us to look at and touch. He was wet and cool from the water.

There were some rabbits outside in a cage that we could pet.

We bought some duck food and everyone enjoyed feeding the ducks and geese.

The ducks would come right up to the fence for food. I guess they were hungry!

There was a section with a few farm animals. The goat would eat right out of your hand.

Too bad Camille doesn't live on a farm, she loves all the animals so much.

I always thought bulls were mean, and I was surprised we could get so close to one.

Britta made friends with the donkey and llama.

There were several turtles. This one was walking around, very slowly. It was interesting to watch them walk. It's almost like they get up on their toes.

This turtle was just basking in the sun. Claire said, "It feels hard as a rock."

Sweet Camille loved all the animals!

The owners told us that alligators are dormant from October through April. They don't hibernate, they move around a little bit, but they don't eat and their heart rate slows way down. It can go as low as 2 beats per minute. Some gators were just lying on the grass.

Others were near the water. They must be about ready to wake up. We watched a couple of them crawl into the water. Austin kept teasing Britta and Ryan that since they were dormant, they could jump in and take a swim and the gators wouldn't bother them.

This gator opened his eyes.They looked black and were partially bloodshot, guess he needs to go back to sleep! We also saw a gator with a big tear coming out of his eye, now we know why they call them "alligator tears"! It was pretty big! They have lots of sharp teeth, but look like they need to be brushed!

This doesn't look very comfortable! I wouldn't want to be the one on the bottom! Who knows how long they stay in one position? We saw a two or three groups just sleeping sprawled all over each other.

We brought a picnic of sandwiches, chips, fruit, and cookies.

The girls are so cute! It was so fun to eat outside!

After lunch we went back into the gift shop. On their website, we had seen pictures of several people holding alligators. After looking at a few of them, Austin made the observation that it looked like a statue because the mouth, arms, and legs were always in the same position, and the mouths weren't banded. Sure enough, he was right! Here is the statue. We decided it was false advertising because it made you think you could hold a real alligator. Although I wouldn't want to hold one unless its mouth was banded shut!