A Visit to the Reptile Zoo, part 1

I took a lot of photos, so am breaking this up into two parts.  On Easter Sunday, Tina and I visited the Reptile Zoo which is just east of Monroe.  It is run by a former biology teacher and does great work educating folks about our cold-blooded friends.

There are two large rooms full of snakes, lizards, turtles, alligators -- plus a few bonus critters like spiders and giant cockroaches.  Admission is $8 and it's open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas.

There are special viewing and handling opportunities at various times -- we arrived in time for the 11am snake-handling.  After I allowed a boa constrictor to wander all over my arms, I turned it over to Tina:

Okay, so it was really tiny boa constrictor, but still.  Cool.

We were not allowed to handle the Black Mamba below, for obvious reasons.

We spent a happy hour wandering around admiring the various inhabitants:

Gecko

Tortoises

Anole

At noon, Rocko the Rock Iguana was brought out for a little petting session.

Other attractions included Basker the albino alligator:

Pete and Repete, the two-headed turtle:

A bird-eating tarantula (though now its diet is more restricted):

A Green Basilisk:

Markus the Snapping Turtle:

A Reticulated Python:

We had checked in advance on the possibility of doing some drawing while there, and the owner was happy to allow us to sketch.  More on that tomorrow!