We just heard about a really cool new trend, and we couldn’t wait to tell you about it. It’s fun, it’s exciting and it’s just a little bit dangerous.
It’s gator pool parties!
Oh, wait, it’s not just the normal pool parties that UF students have daily during the summer? You mean this new trend is of actual, live alligators being placed in pools with children who then smile and take their pictures with them?
That sounds a bit too exotic for us. But that’s what Alligator Attraction offers.
The Tampa Bay Times explains how the workers “take alligators smaller than 4 feet long to pool parties around the Tampa Bay area and allow guests to swim with them, hold them and take photos.”
Bob Barrett, the owner of Alligator Attraction, and his “gator parties” recently made the national news circuit, mostly because people are rightfully concerned about a myriad of safety issues.
“If you’re 9, 10 or 11 years old, you’ve already had the ‘jumparoo’ house, the bounce house, you’ve had the pizza party, you’ve had the clown party,” Barrett said to ABC News. “You get to have a pool party with a gator. It’s a very popular party.”
Apparently, kids these days love it.
“They really were so into it,” Chris Jones, a mother in the Tampa Bay area, said of the party she threw for her 8-year-old this summer.
Only, she didn’t tell her son or his guests about the “gator party” ahead of time. Imagine telling your mother that you were at a pool party with live alligators in the pool with you. Then, imagine never going to a birthday party again.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Officer Baryl Martin said that it’s not something they would necessarily encourage people to try.
“But it is not a violation of the law,” Martin said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “Our main concern is the safety of the people and the animals.”
Although the alligators’ mouths are taped shut, and they are very young, that doesn’t sound like an atmosphere that would be described as “safe parenting.” Fine, OK, we guess proper precautions are taken when putting reptiles in the same pool as kids.
Quite frankly, these parties sound terrible, but maybe that’s because we’re not 8-year-old boys who might love these kinds of things.
“They go really fast,” Marshall Jones said when describing his awesome pool party this summer. “They’re like, really cool.”
Fair enough, Marshall. Fair enough. Maybe this trend isn’t as bad as we thought.
It’s certainly better than “butt chugging.” Also, don’t Google “butt chugging.
