It isn’t common for people to want alligators as pets, though... “When they get to three feet, nobody wants them,” Henney said. “They can bite and they’re extremely hard to handle.” Wildlife experts agree: Alligators generally don’t make good pets, and they’re illegal to own in many states. The animals can also be deadly....
“The jaw pressure from an alligator’s bite force is incredibly strong, and their powerful tails can whip you,” said Raul Diaz, a herpetologist and evolutionary development biologist who teaches at California State University at Los Angeles. They are also predators who are hardwired to believe that other creatures want to eat them, so they are defensive early on, he said...
Henney now takes his gator to swim parties, football games, and to schools and summer camps for educational presentations about reptiles. WallyGator does not have a harness around his mouth, but he has never bitten anyone, Henney said.
The alligator is "registered," we're told, as an "emotional support animal," but registered with what? Something called the "U.S. Service Animals website." But this isn't a service animal! There's a photo of the registration card, but the card doesn't name any organization. The caption declares that the card "show[s] he's a registered emotional support animal."
I'm going to print out a card that says I'm a "Registered Opponent of Emotional Support Animals." It will show that I'm a registered opponent of emotional support animals.
The Washington Post article is festooned with embedded posts from Henney's Instagram account and other photos by Joie Henney, including photos of him taking the alligator to assisted living homes to be petted by frail old ladies. Like this:
Posts
65 comments:
I'm going to print out a card that says I'm a "Registered Woo Yeller." It will show that I am registered and authorized to Ride Space Mountain whenever I damn well please.
It will have instructions in fine print at the bottom: *present this card at any time and for any reason to anyone, champ*
This is one of the stupidest articles I've ever seen in The Washington Post.
Good newspapers die in the darkness.
A new support group, Dinosaurs for dinosaurs? There have been many "support animal" claims at airports. Andy Warhol's 'fifteen minutes' in action.
This man loved grizzly bears and lived with them in Alaska:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Treadwell
His remains were found in a bear's stomach.
Darwin Award nominee both.
Captain Jack: Now if you were to fall in among these beasts... The alligator would not bite off your arm, he'd saw it off.
Beaver: Wally, where would he get the saw?
Do I see some codger-skin booties in someone’s future?
Gators usually make terrible pets, and people usually make terrible gator pet owners. It can be done well (love you Rex!) but it sadly usually isn't.
I'm sure he is just making a case for a Darwin Award.
Beaver: This concludes your tour.
"This is one of the stupidest articles I've ever seen in The Washington Post." Pretty high bar.
Florida Man knows better than to do this.
"This is one of the stupidest articles I've ever seen in The Washington Post." That's a large claim, Ann. There's so much to choose from.
As a resident of Florida, I can assure you that we don't look at 'gators' as pet material. As a dog owner, I walk her with my head on a swivel as we go by bodies of water down here. I don't think I'd sleep with one. On the other hand, a gator might be softer to the touch and more kind in nature than some of my past girlfriends.
Gator Got Your Granny... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrT-TQTLoiw
It's sad to watch the WaPo fall apart. Hring the likes of Taylor Lorenz isn't exactly demanding high journalisstic standards. The rag has no better use than lining a bird cage.
Reminds me of the woman who had a chimp named Travis. She was sure he was tame but one day he attacked and mauled his owner's friend in Stamford, Connecticut, blinding her, severing several body parts and lacerating her face, before he was shot and killed by a responding police officer.
To repeat a comment from yesterday's breast feeding post: Nature is not lollipops and unicorn farts. How did we convince ourselves that it is?
The need to rebel and assert your position in the tribe by acting dangerous and getting attention starts later in life for some it seems.
Ryan slammed Joe Biden as a Loser only for Sharing some Twitts
Trump wouldn't put up with this nonsense. The stolen election has consequences. Hunter Biden is profiting from these support animal registration cards to bankroll his cocaine habit. This is why we can't have nice things.
Take him out to the swamp, give him a teary-eyed slap him on the rump and say, "Go! Go on now, boy! You're free!"
ha ha ha
There has to be a political angle here. Probably a set up about stupid Trump and DeSantis supporters in FL.
I've kept and bred alligators in the past; I know people in the Cincinnati area who are keeping them or crocodiles now in their basements or garages. Not to mention venomous snakes and lizards, pythons and such. While they are fascinating to interact with, allis, crocs and venomous are NOT emotional support animals. That guy is not being responsible!
My late aunt, aged 93, came to my house for Thanksgiving dinner one year, while I was breeding boa constrictors for the pet trade. My wife and I gave her and some other relatives a tour of the critter area, and she did hold a young boa that licked hr ear. She enjoyed the encounter, but that was a one time occurrence.
I did nursing home tours with a few of our friendliest cats around the same time. People loved the cats, and we got a lot of smiles from the seniors.(And the cats enjoyed fish snacks and the attention)
Plague Monk
Any man with an emotional support anything is effectively giving up on having a woman in his life, but this is basically an abandonment of human contact of any kind. Query whether the schools and camps understand and make clear in their permission slips that the alligator is unrestrained.
"This is one of the stupidest articles I've ever seen in The Washington Post." - Ann Althouse
Missed all those "Hunter Biden's laptop is disinformation" stories, eh? And all the Russia pee-pee tape stories? You missed those stories?
"This is one of the stupidest articles I've ever seen in The Washington Post." - Ann Althouse
Missed all those "Hunter Biden's laptop is disinformation" stories, eh? And all the Russia pee-pee tape stories? You missed those stories?
"This is one of the stupidest articles I've ever seen in The Washington Post." - Ann Althouse
Missed all those "Hunter Biden's laptop is disinformation" stories, eh? And all the Russia pee-pee tape stories? You missed those stories?
Blogger Tom T. said...
Any man with an emotional support anything is effectively giving up on having a woman in his life, but this is basically an abandonment of human contact of any kind.
I agree. Trump wouldn't allow this travesty. He prefers his war heros without PTSD which to him is a sign of weakness.
President Joe Biden on Aug. 25 signed into law the Puppies Assisting Wounded Servicemembers for Veterans Therapy Act (HR 1448/S 613) that requires the secretary of veterans affairs to establish a five-year program to provide service dogs to veterans with PTSD. The AVMA supported the legislation.
"Any man with an emotional support anything is effectively giving up on having a woman in his life, but this is basically an abandonment of human contact of any kind."
Women are like 99% of these. In point of fact, they've been collecting emotional support cats for so long it became a cliche. There's a silver lining though. Recent data points out that women are making a strong personal transition to emotional support dogs, and lots of them. This proves that women - contrary to popular opinion - are capable to adapting idioms and making behavioral choices within stereotypes that are atypical.
The number of 'crazy dog ladies' is rising. WATCH OUT CAT LADIES!
One component of the structural and systemic bias of US news is the notion / definition that "Dog bites man" is NOT news, while Man bites dog, IS news." So odd, exceptional, and unlikely stories get the spotlight, and much more common and likely situations "die in the darkness". In the U.S. dozens of people die from animal attacks, on farms and ranches, by livestock. This is double the number who die from dog bites. Which is of course more than ten times larger than the numbers who die from alligator attacks. But the systemic structural bias inflates the perceived dangers of alligators.
In the good old days in the lazy, crazy days of summer there were stories like this in the paper. "Man Has Alligator as Pet" - a natural for reading at the beach. But now "a man with an unusual pet" is a story that might bite and kill since the concept "pet" is more questionable these days than "alligator pet" and also "man" (and, likely "white") are words and unspoken words with swampy dimensions from which killer attacks may at any moment lunge. So kudos to the "man" and the "Washington Post" for reworking this ancient summer story into a 21st century version: "A senior citizen with an unusual emotional support animal." The man and the reporter have met. ("Kudos" is a 21st century way of saying congratulations when you have to because there's an alligator in the room, and if you let it be seen that you're against alligators being in the room, you will be labeled "redneck", "deplorable", etc. and people will draw away from you as if you were an alligator in the room. But still you know "stupid and dangerous" when you see it. So, kudos, kudos to all involved. Cheers.)
This has emotional support monkey run amuck written all over it.
Gorilla Monsoon used to refer to heel wrestling manager Mr. Fuji as "The Devious One".
I always wanted that under my name on my business card.
This is one of the stupidest articles I've ever seen in The Washington Post.
Everything they’ve written about Donald Trump for the past six years is, objectively, more stupid.
My favorite alligator song of ALL time: Tony Joe White's "Gumbo John".
Wait for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6qe9I0d5KA
Maybe all this is a precursor, softening us up for the announcement, just before mid-terms, of the new Gator Party. Honesty in Politics is their motto.
I keep repeating this, but never gets very far. ALL animals are fully capable of going into full fight and kill mode. Dogs, the most common pet NOT an exception
Sometime in the last 2 weeks, the local early morning news 4:30-7:00 did a story of a woman attacked by her own, 5 Great Danes, attacked mauled and killed their female owner that had them out for an early morning walk. A man that came upon the pack could not get near to see what had happened and had to wait for help to recover the remains.
A family that allows an alligator into a home, need to be institutionalized for their, and their neighbors safety.
How is it even possible to emotionally bond with a reptile? Years ago, I knew someone who kept a pet gecko, but it was done mostly because she thought the gecko would keep the roach population down in a humane way. She wasn't emotionally involved with her gecko. She had some kind of ethical objection to roach motels. In a way, she had emotional support roaches.
Everyone thinks their gator is special……
And when it bites somebodies face...let the owner pay the medical bills, because it WILL happen. Remember the woman who got her face bitten off by a chimpanzee??
but registered with what?
This is a huge problem with service animals, not just "emotional support" animals. Jump through a couple of paperwork hoops and you can get Fido registered as a service dog whether it has proper training or not. Testing not required.
That gator can not be returned to the wild. It no longer has an avoidance instinct for humans and is much more likely to attack humans.
I have lived in north east Florida my entire life. Alligators need to be aggressively culled starting yesterday.
Warning to tourists. Other than the ocean - and be careful there too - never EVER swim in water that isn't crystal gin clear as in our numerous 1st magnitude springs (Ichetucknee, Blue springs, et al). Never EVER let your small children or pets play on the banks of a river in Florida. They are all prey and they will be snatched and eaten alive.
When my kids came home from school excited to tell me that Texas has alligators (I loved their elementary school), I immediately promised to keep any gators they could catch, in a pen right in our back yard. I am still disappointed that they never took me up on the offer.But now that I think back, there was no time limit on the offer, so perhaps there is still hope.
"This is one of the stupidest articles I've ever seen in The Washington Post." - Ann Althouse
While it may be true, as others have also suggested, you're probably not the best judge...
We all know the ending to this story. The only variable is the "when".
Tim Tebow was a very special Gator, and much more dangerous because he was a big media personality who didn't kowtow to the idiotic diversity and intersectionality mantras that the U of Florida force feeds its audience of future debt defaulters.
"He's a very special gator," said Joie 'Three Fingers' Henney.
Fixed it...
Howard, service animals are a different breed, and PTSD is something more than emotional fragility.
Registry card...
Best bit from Parks and Recreation: "Not to worry, I have a permit." The permit reads: "I can do what I want"
Roger Sweeny said...
To repeat a comment from yesterday's breast feeding post: Nature is not lollipops and unicorn farts. How did we convince ourselves that it is?
My all time favorite is the Bancroft/Aronson expedition to the north pole. It was called off a week in because of frostbite. Money quote:
Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures.
"They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."
http://archive.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/03/12/frostbite_ends_bancroft_arnesen_trek/
There's a youtube channel my daughter found with a young couple and a gator they've rescued. They're licensed animal rehab folks and the gator came to them as part of a program, not becuz they wanted a pet gator or anything. Anyway, the channel goes through them showing the challenges of having such an animal and the special way they have to deal with it, how they've set up a specially reinforced room and such for it, and so on.
I don't recall the name of the channel to refer anyone to it, but the takeaway from every video seemed to be "Yeah, this animal is not good for a pet, and while we enjoy the challenge and take enjoyment from our relationship with the animal, this is our work, not fun. Don't do this yourself!"
Heartless Aztec: once I house-sat near Dade City. I went to an overgrown, tannin-dark river often and swam with my labrador puppy. Things often nibbled my toes, but I was young and dumb and from New York. And she was a labrador puppy. So, not a lot of brainpower between us.
When my friend came back to his folks' house, we went to the creek. The dog and I jumped in. He was appalled. He said it was probably "just" garfish "tasting" me, but they could eat the dog. And then he pointed out an alligator sunning not far away. And then he reminded me that the town has a rattlesnake festival. I wore out my guardian angels pretty early. Fire ants still crawl in my dreams.
Never EVER let your small children or pets play on the banks of a river in Florida. They are all prey and they will be snatched and eaten alive.
Okay, since 1973, 24 people have been killed by gators in Florida (less than one every two years). On the other hand, between 2011 and 2020, 49 were killed by lightning (a little over 5 a year). So while it is really a bad idea to keep a gator as a pet, in the wild you are literally more likely to be struck by lightning.
PETA
People for the Euthanasia of Throwaway Alligators
see the chris rock about tigers and siegfried and roy,
@Freder Federson: and how many attacks on humans that resulted in injury and how many pets killed or injured by alligators?
Cull them now. Aggressively.
"I'm going to print out a card that says I'm a "Registered Opponent of Emotional Support Animals." It will show that I'm a registered opponent of emotional support animals" Print more than one and I'll buy a copy from you.
The comments on the WaPo article are fascinating, and not in a good way. By my count, about half of them feel the need to take a gratuitous dig at a Republican, for no reason that I can see except a desire to express hatred or contempt.
Are the self-selected commenters at WaPo that much out of the left-wing mainstream, or is there that much malice in the hearts of the political left these days?
Handled small (SMALL) alligators as part of an education program through a well-known zoo.
Sanitation is a huge concern. Washing hands before and after was required. The kids were required to wash up with an additional soap if they touched the alligator. Would NOT recommend them as pets.
How is it possible that Freder is on the wrong side — the anti-common sense side — of every discussion that arises here? Nobody made an assertion about the relative danger of gators vs. lightning. Gators are just dangerous, it’s really as simple as that.
Nobody made an assertion about the relative danger of gators vs. lightning. Gators are just dangerous, it’s really as simple as that.
But someone did assert that letting children anywhere near the bank of a river in Florida was inviting an immediate and horrible death. Gators are dangerous, yes, but so are boats. In fact, 79 people died in boating accidents in Florida in 2020. Shall we also cull boats? Oh yeah, and 98 children drowned in Florida in 2021. So perhaps we should cull swimming pools too.
Freder Frederson is terrible at judging risk.
Keeping an alligator as a pet means your risk of getting chomped is higher than the 1 every 2 years stated.
Avoiding water that is probably habitat for alligators reduces the risk below that of those who play on the bank; and children, being generally smaller than average, are prey for more alligators.
Great, Freder — you can let your children/grandchildren/whatever stroll those Florida riverbanks. As for myself, I see no reason to invite trouble.
He's a very special gator,
The kind you don't take home to mother ...
You used to be able to buy baby alligators alligators at the pet store. The rumor is they stopped¹ because people got tired of them and flushed them down the toilet and they bred in the sewers.
WaIt to see what happens when you for whatever reason cannot feed him.
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