I did take the African tour. Haha I cant believe the guide played along with that, that's pretty funny. Im sure they wait all day to say something like that! The trees your thinking of are Baobab trees and all the info about them are true. At the size they are in Animal Kingdom, they are sometimes up to 1000 years old. They also lose their leaves for much of the year and then for a short period of time make lots of leaves and blooms during the short wet season. The trees could probably survive in Florida (There are some in Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami which stays green for most of the year since Florida is wet most of the year and then loses it's leaves in the winter when Florida gets very little rain), but they would never get to the size that Disney needs them to be to make it look like Africa so they did some "imagineering" and created the trees with concrete. That whole area was completely flat land before Animal Kingdom, they added truck loads and truck loads of dirt daily for much of the construction time in Animal Kingdom in order to give the landscape enough dynamics to pull off the African look. Disney World is a pretty impressive place for sure with lots of great plats! -Alex

My 4 kitties - George, Sam, Mike, and Bugsy. George is a foreign type, very thin, long legs, long tail, black and brown tabby. His teeth are about 2" long. Sam is our "fat cat". Yellow tabby. Mike is my psychologically disturbed cat - he has a personality disorder. He is a long-haired gray/white, with lime green eyes. Won't eat anything but wet food. Hates everyone but me, and sometimes me. Bites me on the toe if I don't feed him quick enough. Bugsy is the baby - 3 years old. Dark grey and white bi-color. He's the cutey, and my granddaughter's, McKenna, cat. He sleeps with her, on her tummey or on her back. Protector cat. Susan

The areas we night hunted Chad had been to previously. During the day we explored, searching for hogs and anything else that happened to be out in the 85-90 degree weather. Besides the turtles, we saw another recently hit copperhead, a DOR coachwhip, and a ribbon snake in the field. I missed a rough green in the field, which was very frustrating as I seem to otherwise have a DOR curse for the species (which continued through this trip as is evidenced on the list below). We discovered one beautiful drive which proved that the suspected resident was indeed in the area. Unfortunately, we were late in crossing his pathI tried to crop a small section of this once handsome specimen to cut out gore: We decided to walk the hillside habitat, but only a large box turtle was aboutÂin different conditions/time of year, this area certainly would have showed us more. By evening, we felt like we needed a break from driving and DORs before cruising that night, so when we came up on a couple of bridges we hopped out to walk around. Not expecting much more than the chance to stretch the legs and dodge poison ivy, I scrambled down under the bridge. After poking around a bit, my eyes crossed the path of this impressive beastÂright in the middle of the creek: We had just been musing about whether we were in cottonmouth range yetÂwe were Western Cottonmouth, Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma , no flashÂalthough lacking detail, I liked the texture effect of this shot with flash As we were taking pictures, Chad noticed a small snake submerged not more than a couple feet from the cottonmouth. It turned out to be a blotched water snakeÂwe couldnÂt escape nerodia-less. Rejuvenated, we started the pigmy/pygmy (whichever you prefer) quest. After missing 2 or 3 more rough greens to trucks and semis in front of us, we came over a hill and had to quickly veer to straddle this fellowÂnote the car cresting the hill that would have been his doom. Black rat snake, Elaphe o. obsoleta And then we found him, shining white against the headlights, Mr. Streckeri  a beautiful animal, with an almost orange stripe: Western Pigmy/Pygmy Rattlesnake, Sistrurus miliarius streckeri Awhile later, Chad spied another great animal along the edge of the road. Speckled kingsnake, Lampropeltis getulus holbrooki On the way out, Chad spotted one more pigmy, this time a DOR--my eyes seemed to be done by now and seemed to be on 2-plus foot snake focus. We left the area early (11:00 PM), satisfied with our finds and wanting to get the drive home over with-- This is the list of species seen, as best as I can rememberÂIÂm sure I am forgetting a few: Western Pygmy Rattlesnake, Sistrurus miliarius streckeri 2 (1 DOR) Western Cottonmouth, Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma 1 Timber Rattlesnake, Crotalus horridus 1 (DOR) Broad-banded copperhead, Agkistrodon contortrix laticinctus 6 (3 DOR) Northern Scarlet snake, Cemophora coccinea copei 1 (DOR) Speckled kingsnake, Lampropeltis getulus holbrooki 1 Prairie Kingsnake - Lampropeltis c. calligaster 1 (DOR) Black rat snake, Elaphe o. obsoleta 2 (1 DOR) Northern Rough Green snake, Opheodrys a. aestivus 6 (5 DOR) Blotched water snake, Nerodia erythrogaster transversa 1 Bull snake, Pituophis melanoleucus sayi 1 (DOR) Texas brown snake, Storeria dekayi texana 2 Eastern Coachwhip, Masticophis flagellum flagellum 1 (DOR) Prairie Racerunner, Cnemidophorus sexlineatus viridis 6 Northern Fence Lizard, Sceloporus undulatus hyacinthinus 1 Three-toed Box Turtle - Terrapene carolina triunguis (many) Ornate Box Turtle - Terrapene ornata ornate (many) Red-eared Slider - Trachemys scripta elegans 5+ Midland Smooth Softshell - Apalone mutica mutica ? 1 Eastern Snapping Turtle - Chelydra serpentina serpentine (DORs) Southern Leopard Frog - Rana sphenocephala utricularia (hundreds) American Bullfrog - Rana catesbeiana (many) Eastern/Cope's Gray Treefrog - Hyla versicolor/chrysoscelis (many) Woodhouse's Toad - Bufo woodhousii woodhousii Northern Spring Peeper - Pseudacris crucifer crucifer (heard) Western Chorus Frog - Pseudacris triseriata (heard)

I should mention that there was an excursion we could have purchased on the ship that only went to the sea turtle release center, where you name and release a turtle yourself. It was something like $50 for that tour. I told DH that I liked turtles and all but that was a bit pricey for what they had to offer. So we bought the "Tropical Aviary and Botanical Garden" tour for about the same price. Below is a photo of me waiting for the tour group to gather and leave. The guy holding the sign was our guide. Even though he looks a little serious, he was amazing...and very funny! So, we go on the Tropical Aviary part of the tour (the lagoon and river/canal pics I showed earlier) and the botanical garden portion (also posted pics) several miles away and then, just on a whim (probably an economically driven whim) we drop by the turtle release center (which was not on our itinerary) and given that tour. If you wanted to release a baby turtle into the sea, it cost $5 ... not $50! Three for the price of two, I like that kind of deal. We did get back later than planned but still have plenty of time to "enjoy" Acapulco which consisted of us shopping for makeup and good hair conditioner (which I forgot to pack). I swear, it's always something. Jodi-