We live near a park with alligators in an exhibit, they are well fed and lounge on the banks of a little pond, with some turtles, sunning themselves - so I always let my kids lean over the railing, not touch them or anything but I didn’t worry about it since they were fed & lazy.
Until one day, we saw one of them lunge at a turtle and grab it, moving so fast! Crunch crunch gulp. Which disabused me of two wrong ideas. One, that these alligators did not care to have a snack, and two, that nothing but eagles could eat turtles. Someone had told me that no animal could bite through a turtle shell, but that eagles would drop them from a great height to crack them open, and since I’d never seen another animal eat a turtle, I bought it.
We live near a park with alligators in an exhibit, they are well fed and lounge on the banks of a little pond, with some turtles, sunning themselves - so I always let my kids lean over the railing, not touch them or anything but I didn’t worry about it since they were fed & lazy.
Until one day, we saw one of them lunge at a turtle and grab it, moving so fast! Crunch crunch gulp. Which disabused me of two wrong ideas. One, that these alligators did not care to have a snack, and two, that nothing but eagles could eat turtles. Someone had told me that no animal could bite through a turtle shell, but that eagles would drop them from a great height to crack them open, and since I’d never seen another animal eat a turtle, I bought it.
So after that, no more leaning over.