Reptile Gardens

So technically, this post should have come after the Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse post, since this is in Rapid City. We went to Reptile Gardens the next morning. Al said we'd need about two hours there. We ended up staying for four hours...and we rushed.Reptile Gardens opens at 8:00am and we got there probably around 8:15, so there weren't many people around yet. We started off in the dome area, which you can see in the photo above. It's a really neat area that features an indoor rainforest in the middle and individual animal displays around the perimeter. Here are a few shots:

Komodo Dragon:

Maniac, a very large saltwater crocodile (I think he was about 14 feet):

Saw-Scaled Viper:

Soft-Shell Turtle...I loved the nose!

Al saw this Emperor Scorpion and let out a gasp. I couldn't figure out what was so exciting about a scorpion, since Al's never really been into the stinging arachnids. However, when I got close, I figured it out...can you? (Look below the photo for the answer.)The white things on her back are her babies! How cute!

Ok, so maybe not really all that cute, but we did manage to find some super-cute reptiles:

Yes, we realize that we can see these anytime right in our own home, but we were overly excited anyway!

The indoor rainforest was really neat. All of the plants and flowers are alive and growing, which made it that much more interesting. As you wander around the flowers, there are animals hanging out, too.

Lizards who were enjoying their heat lamp:

Tortoises:

Birds: (Red and gold Macaw):

Amazon Parrots:

And a Colombian Boa (probably about 5-6 feet), hanging about three feet above Al's head:

Emerging from the dome, we took advantage of a couple of photo-ops:

And then we attended the shows. They do a snake show, crocodilian show, and a bird show. They time them so it's a constant rotation. It took us almost two hours to watch all three shows. Sorry we don't have pictures of the bird show, but we'd forgotten to charge the camera battery and Al wanted to save the juice for more cold-blooded creatures.

Snake show highlights--this guy was the most entertaining of the presenters. He had corny jokes like the rest of them, but it seemed like he actually believed they were funny...

Albino Burmese Python:

Rear-fanged, venomous, Mangrove Snake--he told a story about how the snake had bitten his thumb once during a performance.

Hooded Cobra--this is the snake that is responsible for the most human deaths annually. It isn't the most venomous snake out there, but it lives in highly populated areas that don't have the best medical response and facilities.

Here is a clip from the show where he plays with a rattlesnake. He's talking about the myth of telling a rattlesnake's age by counting the rings on its rattle.

Crocodilian Show: When you watch the video, listen for the "Uf-Dah" that the presenter says. Al thought it was great because it's Scandinavian, and thus very Dakota-ey.

Right after he jumps off the crocodile/alligator/caiman (whichever one he happened to grab), he goes and gets a bucket of chicken pieces. The residents have learned the routine by now:

After the shows, we wandered around a bit more. The prairie dog enclosure has a plastic bubble right in front of the food dish that you can stick your head through and get up close and personal.

You can walk through the Galapagos Tortoises and get pictures of them. Apparently, they like to try to jump over one another:

Here's a film of the attempt. The sound the tortoise makes is very funny!

Here is one of their bald eagles. This one was found with an injured wing and cannot fly:

And that's Reptile Gardens...the abridged version.