Some people try to make house pets out of alligators. It can be fun when they're tiny, but eventually they grow several feet long, which is not sustainable for most households. Hand-raised alligators can't fend for themselves in the wild, so what's to become of them?
Lina Kelly runs the Critchlow Alligator Sanctuary in Athens, Michigan. It is home to almost 200 gators from all over the country. She knows them all by name, and gives them the best retirement possible for a human-dependent wild predator. It beats being turned into luggage.
The sanctuary also takes in rejected turtles, caimans, lizards, and other reptiles. They have educational programs about their animals, and they even sell necklaces of alligator teeth. -via Digg
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