Cpress Gardens-The Butterfly House

 Wednesday afternoon  February 15

After watching the boat races, we had lunch and got in Steve's truck and headed to Cypress Gardens.  It was about an hour's drive away, and to big city dwellers like S & K, this was nothing.  We thought it sounded like a long way away.  While watching the boat races one of the men I was talking told me it was a great place to visit and not to miss it.  We had been wavering about going.  So, that decided it.

As we were walking up to the visitors' center, we were greeted by this gator:

Luckily, he was made from cement, but it was quite realistic.  Would be fun to have one in our yard, but don't think our mowers would appreciate it.

Cypress Gardens is a really interesting place.  There were several parrots in huge cages and most of them were talking to us.  We did not get any pictures of them as the lighting was bad and the public was far enough away to protect the birds, so my little camera just would not have done them justice.
Next was the butterfly house.  What fun it was!

Don't know what these little birds were, but they were having a glorious time digging in the dirt.  Maybe some kind of quail?  I asked two people and no one could answer.

Love his orange eye.  Ignore the poop!

And the token butterfly in the butterfly house.

Here is another one of those little birds.  Hope someone can tell me what it is.

Scattered among the plants are nice little quotes such as these:

Found another butterfly!  Not easy to take pics of these little things!  They really don't seem to want to land!

A view of the inside.

Hang on to your hats!  We found a strange breed of butterflies!  I am not sure that anyone even knows that they are flying around in there.  I would run if you see them!