The Wandering Disciple

Meet Mardi. Mardi is a rare leucistic alligator, one of 22 seized by the Louisiana Department of Fish and Game after being caught illegally by fisherman. Her and her siblings resided at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans before being sent to zoos around the country. Mardi found her home here at the Palm Beach Zoo. A leucistic alligator has a gene mutation which causes it to have almost no pigment in their skin and have bright blue eyes. They are not true albino because they have some pigmentation around the mouth and tail while having blue eyes instead of red. leucistic alligators are extremely rare, out of the over 5 million alligators there are believed to be only 12 leucistic alligators remaining. (Photo: June 22, 2019)

Loxahatchee, Florida:  We embarked in the early morning on our Mother's Day road trip.  What was planned a three generation celebration with my grandma, mom and wife heading to the east coast for the day, ended up one generation short with my grandma opting not to go. We hit the road early for the cross state trip from Englewood to West Palm Beach.  A long drive through the middle of nowhere.  We have taken this trip several years ago and I had forgotten how uneventful the drive was.  Hours of cattle farms, run down downs, sugar cane farms and prisons provided the scenery for the trip. After a little over three hours on the road we reached our destination, Lion Country Safari.  The attraction west of West Palm Beach is part driving safari and part walking zoo.  We were the second car in line for the park to open, a great place to be. Once the gates open, we started the driving safari.  With a navigation CD in the CD player, we hit the open...