Date of visit: August 9 2019 Ah, Wisconsin Dells. This wonderful town is a classic example of ecotourism gone horribly wrong. Amidst all the water parks, moose-themed restaurants, and more hotels than you can count, is a little reptile zoo. I have in the past called many of the Wisconsin roadside facilities I have visited "interesting" due to the fact that they are so different than the AZA facilities most of us are used to visiting that they felt difficult to categorize. But this one takes the cake. I thought the motorcycle zoo was weird, but clearly I hadn't seen anything yet... Alligator Alley is a small reptile zoo/pet shop that opened its doors in 1996. They advertise "two-headed turtle and snake" as well as "feed the gators a live mouse" and "world's largest snapping turtle". It started out strange even in the parking lot. The parking lot contained multiple dirty diapers (?) and the store across the shared lot was still advertising that they sold fidget spinners. Upon walking in, the first thing I noticed was a wall of terrariums...all with price tags! I thought this was a zoo, not a pet shop! Most of the stuff sold was pretty normal (Common Leopard Gecko, Red-eared Slider) but I saw for $200 you could buy a gator hatching, and for $250 an Alligator Snapping Turtle! Just the kind of thing I want to buy, a turtle that could bite my arm off! I hadn't even paid admission yet! After paying, you walk through a gate into an area...lit with black lights? I'm not sure why, but while the exhibits themselves are lit with pretty normal lights, the hallway is lit entirely with black lights. This area is a full loop around a centerpiece American Alligator exhibit. It had lots of room and lots of gators, but suffered from a huge problem that almost all the exhibits have here: no hiding places. The vast majority of the enclosures here have no place to hide for the inhabitants. It's just a big pool with a little bit of elevated land, with nothing to see other than the animal itself. A few lucky animals get a couple of hiding spots, but the ones that do often have very little room; in fact most of the animals here have little room. One of the most concerning things about this facility is the amount of two-headed turtles. There weren't any here during my visit, but I saw pictures of two seperate two-headed turtles in the pet shop area: one a Red-eared Slider, and one a Common Snapping Turtle. In the gallery I saw of a photo by @snowleopard with a different two-headed turtle, meaning that they have had at least three! Where are they getting them...? Species List (there was little signage, so several species remain unidentified. I will post photos for ID): Species not seen in italics "Pet Store Area": 1. American Alligator 2. Leopard Gecko ("fancy pattern") 3. Common Boa 4. Common Boa (albino) 5. Painted Turtle 6. Yellow-bellied Slider 7. Red-eared Slider (albino) 8. American Alligator 9. Alligator Snapping Turtle 10. Axolotl 11. Axolotl 12. Nile Monitor 13. Pac-Man Frog (albino) 14. Mexican Red-knee Tarantula 15. Black Emperor Scorpion 16. Oriental Fire-bellied Toad 17. Oriental Fire-bellied Toad 18. Green Tree Frog "Zoo Area: 1. American Alligator 2. unidentified kingsnake (with two heads) 3. Burmese Python (leucistic) 4. unidentified snake 5. Indian Spotted Pond Turtle, unidentified turtle species x2 6. Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman 7. Green Anaconda 8. unidentified snapping turtle (signed as Florida Snapping Turtle. Any chance this is Macrochelys suwanniensis?) 9. Alligator Snapping Turtle 10. Common Snapping Turtle (albino) 11. Matamata 12. Red-eared Slider (albino), False Map Turtle, unidentified turtle species x3 13. Philippine Sailfin Lizard 14. American Alligator (albino) 15. Burmese Python (albino) 16. Green Anaconda 17. Reticulated Python 18. Green Anaconda 19. Spectacled Caiman 20. African Bullfrog 21. Cane Toad 22. unidentified amphiuma 23. Eastern Tiger Salamander 24. Pac-Man Frog (albino) 25. Woodhouse's Toad (albino)
