What it's Like to Have a Pet Alligator

Last week we showed you a video where we brought Rex, our alligator, to the vet. And this week, now that she's healthy again, I want to share a video with you of various clips on what it's like to live with an alligator. Some of these clips were filmed a while ago, back when we thought she was a boy, so excuse those clips. And she is a girl, even though we say he. By the way, Rex is heavily stunted because of her past. She was neglected and kept in a very small box for 27 years, not fed properly. All sorts of health issues arose because of that. If you want to learn more about her history, you can watch this video right here. But all in all, no, I would never recommend anyone have an alligator as a pet. And no, we were never expecting or wanting to have an alligator as a pet, but we had to get her out of that situation. So we try to make her life as happy as possible. So here is what it's like to live with an alligator. When we first got Rex, he had a lot of mouth rot inside of his mouth, and our vet recommended that we brush his teeth once a week. And that did help clear it up. There is some scarring left behind. And to prevent future mouth rot, we actually do brush his teeth just on occasion. And today we brought Rex with us to a school program. He is in his travel bin right now. We just got home. And since he's kind of tuckered out as a result of being exposed to a lot of kids for an hour and a half for this program, this is the perfect opportunity to brush his teeth. Despite spending the majority of his time in his pool, Rex does still occasionally need a bath. He gets some gunk that develops on his back. So we're going to also give him a bath tonight as well. And then we can just take care of everything in one go. And then we'll put him back in his room to relax. Reptile toothpaste consists of baking soda. It doesn't take a whole lot. And water. And you mix it together until you have kind of a toothpaste consistency. I'm going to need less water. This is safe for the animals. It was recommended by our vet. It has helped clean up his mouth tremendously. And now it's just used preventatively. There we go. That'll work. Since he doesn't really appreciate getting his teeth brushed, I do kind of have to hold him into place and hold his mouth shut. He may wiggle around a little bit here. I can kind of feel him tensing up. But that's okay. He's, like I said, he's tuckered out from the school. So I'm going to dip my toothbrush into his toothpaste. Scoop a little bit out. And then very lightly brush it onto his teeth and onto the edge of his gums. He even has his very own toothbrush for this. There. We can just let that sit on his teeth while we give him a bath. And we'll rinse everything off at the end. Now for the bathing part, it's pretty easy. You can just use, you know, like 80, 85 degree water. And if you want, you can use Dawn dish soap or the Target Off brand. This is a light enough soap that it's not going to harm them in any way. So we're going to add a little bit. And then we actually have this new brush. I wonder how well this will work. I can already see a bunch of gunk floating around in the water. That's already come off of him. Although I am holding his mouth shut, he really doesn't mind this. I'm just holding his head here so that he stays still and doesn't wiggle. But he doesn't mind it. Another reason we're bathing him is because he peed in his traveling tote and he smelled. So we have to clean all of it off. And he's been needing this for a while anyway. So perfect timing. Oh, look over here. Just clouds coming off of his scales. You're a good boy. You can use toothbrush for more delicate areas. Oh, look at all this suds. Obviously, I don't want to try to get it into his eyes. I am trying to avoid those. But it is safe. This is the soap that's used on wildlife all the time. And it's safe for, as far as I know, any animal really. Maybe not amphibians because they absorb things through their skin. Yeah, anything scaled though, I bet it's fine for. Let's use this guy again. So a lot of people have asked if I can touch and hold Rex. And as you can see, we can. He's a little more feisty some days than others. But especially days where he's kind of tuckered out like this, he's a doll. Let's clean your tail. Can I do your feet? No, you can't crawl out of the tub. Fine, I'll rinse you off. You're about as clean as I'm going to get you. There you go, buddy. Successful bath time. Everybody loves a clean alligator. You ready to go back and relax for the evening? You deserve it. Come here, buddy. Well, we have a clean enclosure now. We have a clean alligator. Life is good. Another thing I should mention is that toys are very important for crocodilians. They are a very smart animal. So you need to keep them mentally stimulated with sometimes creative toys. For example, we give Rex a Kong wobbler and it's weighted at the base. So she likes to kind of beat it around a little bit. We also give her extra tubing from the canister filters to just drag around. And I think she thinks that she's destroying something and being devious, even though those tubes are intended for her to play with. Sometimes owning an alligator means fixing things you normally wouldn't have to. In today's case, we have to replace her pool because it's leaking. Over the course of the last few days, her water level has gone down that far. And I've resorted to standing on plastic lids in this room because of the carpet being soaked. I don't know how you popped it, Rex, but maybe your teeth broke the side. Ed and I can't find where the leak is coming from, but we have a big project ahead of us today. By the way, that black dish next to her is her new toy. It's one of those indestructible dog dishes and she likes to bat it around. And so, uh, yeah, something else to keep her occupied with. We are at Menards. This is actually where we got Rex's last pool. And it looks like I see them. Hopefully they have the right size. That looks like it. What do you think? Yep. Perfect. And look, they have pink. Oh my God. Do we get her a pink pool? She is a girl. Oh, we need to do pink. Yes. We have Rex's new pool. And since she is a girl, we got her a beautiful pink pool. Now that we know she's a girl. We thought she was a boy for the longest time. So I'm still wrapping my head around calling her a she. Anyway, while she's removed from the room, we put her in her travel tote for the time being. So she doesn't go over there. Just so she doesn't bother us while we're redoing her room. And we decided since she's out, we may as well just clean everything. I'm trying to soak up the water that spilled and was sitting underneath her pool. So we're going to see how that goes. I'm glad we're replacing it. That's for sure. The old one definitely had a leak of some sort. And while we're here, we're just wiping down the walls. And I'm just trying to clean up everything as best as I can. And one thing I have to do is clean her poop corner. She typically poops in just a single corner of the room. And that's right down here. She folds over this flap and she poops on it. She poops underneath it. It's really lovely. This is what alligator poop looks like, by the way. So basically what I'm going to do before we put the new pool in, and while I'm trying to soak up some of that spilled water, is I'm going to clean all of this up. So for this, I typically use bleach water. Because that just cleans it out the best as I can, basically. And I usually can only clean this when she's out of the room because she tries to help me. So again, just taking advantage of her being gone and cleaning up best we can. There's a lot of fixing involved when you own an alligator. She tears things out of the wall. She pulls this from the wall. So a lot of fixing. So another thing that I have to do on a regular basis, as regular as I can, is clean this canister filter that cleans both our snapping turtle Chloe's water, and that filters down into Rex's pool, and then gets sucked up by the filter, cleaned, and then it goes through actually this heater right here. That's what heats up the water. And then the whole cycle kind of starts again. So occasionally I have to clean this filter here, which is what I'll be doing next. Meanwhile, Rex is chilling in her travel bin. She's not too sure what's going on, I'm sure. This is her cave. Kind of reminds me of like extreme home makeover, where you go somewhere and then you come back and your house is all clean and brand new again. We have to do her filter. I'm sure this is going to be gross. Yep, that's about what I was expecting actually. This is grime and poop from alligator and common snapping turtle. Pretty gross. You don't want to smell this either, but that's why we're cleaning it today. This should be cleaned around. Actually, the filter is a pretty good filter. It needs to be cleaned every couple of months or so. And this is Purigen. It's our filter media that cleans the water at a chemical level. And then we have a bunch of floss to filter out the debris that flows through, and then bio balls for beneficial bacteria. And that kind of helps clean the water naturally. This is all pretty gross though. So the Purigen is going to get replaced with a clean recharged bag, and then I'll clean this one to get ready for next time. The foam is just going to get tossed and replaced. And the bio balls I'm going to rinse out but reuse. And the reason why you don't throw out your biological media is because there's a lot of great, like I said, beneficial bacteria on this that I don't want to get rid of and start brand new. This will actually help the water quality when I put it back in the water. Thankfully, because of the magic of editing, this is now done. And by the way, if you're looking for a cheap alternative to the filter pads, then you can just get 100% polyester fiberfill. It's meant for pillows and like stuffed animals, I believe. But these, oh yeah, there it is right there. This works great though, as long as it's 100% polyester. It works awesome as filtration media for canister filters, and you can use these for hang on the back filters too. You can get it, I think this whole thing was like $8, and you just grab a handful and use it wherever it needed. So a lot cheaper than buying the pre-cut filters that are made for this, but it works just the same. While I was cleaning the filter, Ed was checking out the pool, and he found the hole. Check this out. It's right over here where we had fixed it. We patched it a while ago and Rex's tooth poked a hole right there, but the tape must have finally given out. And it was Gorilla Tape that we used, and it probably lasted, what would you say, a year? Yeah, at least. At least a year, so it's kind of impressive that it lasted that long, so I can't blame it for going out, but that's the culprit. Now that this filter is clean, let's put it back and get a new pool in here, and finally finish this huge, larger than expected project. I don't need another person making a suggestive YouTube video about me priming this thing, so we'll just skip to when this is. And now, since she would take that and barrel roll it and pull it out, we're going to have to protect those tubes again. This is her tube guard, so she can't reach the tubes. It used to be my old bike basket, but I found a better use for it. She would definitely just pull this basket out and then pull the tubes out if I left it like this, so our next level of protection are big bricks from around our house, actually. We use these as another guard, and you'd think that one brick would be good enough, but oh no, she proved us wrong. So we need not one, but three bricks to completely surround this thing and prevent her from getting access to the tubes. Cool, the filter's running, everything looks good. I added her tree back. This is strategically placed here to block her access to that cord so she can't pull out her light again, and I think we're ready for the Kraken. Oh my goodness, oh, we're being a drama queen today. It may seem mean to put a towel over her head, but this really calms down large lizards and crocodilians, so it actually does help her feel a little bit calmer because she's, you know, not too keen on the idea of being removed from her territory here and being placed in her travel bin. So we're going to slowly remove this after I put her back in her room. You big diva. All right, let's put you in here. I know, you're extra ornery today. I don't know why. Why are you extra ornery? Look, look at your pool. She's like, weird, it's pink. Look at you. Well, there we go. That project is done. Brex has a clean pool. Don't feel cold in this one. I like it. It's cute. It's pink and it's clean. The pink will help remind everyone that she's a girl. Yeah. And I might bring up the water level a little bit too. When it comes to feeding our alligator, a lot of the food we get is actually donated by friends as like freezer burnt meat from their freezers. Brex doesn't care if it's freezer burnt. Shelly did anyway. And the other like half of her food comes from our snakes and their unwanted meals. We'll give her the mice and rats and other rodents that our snakes just don't want to eat. She's like a garbage disposal. Today, we're going to be feeding Brex a small mammal that died of natural causes. If you don't want to watch it, just skip to this time right here. But if you want to stick around and watch, the first thing I do when I feed Brex is I show her. I'm not going to show it to you quite yet because she freaks out. I show her this Frisbee. And this is the indicator that I have food. The reason why I do this is because when we first had Brex, she thought that whenever we walked into her room, we had food. So she freaked out and ran towards us every time. And we wanted to curb that behavior. So now we've taught her that it's only when I have this Frisbee that she knows that she's going to get fed. So watch her behavior here. She is sitting under her basking light. She is trying to figure out what's going on. And as soon as I show her this Frisbee, she definitely knows something's going on. As soon as I show her this Frisbee, I bet she'll come running up front. Brex, come here. Come on. Good girl. Here. That was the weirdest noise I've ever heard. You got it. She has to take it to a safe place, of course, before she downs it. A lot of crunching. You can do it. There it goes. And that meal was a pretty large meal that'll last her about a week. I'll sometimes give her two smaller meals spread out about three or four days from each other. But the frequency really just depends on how big of a meal she gets. I'd say that's a smile. Yeah. Here's a quick video clip of Brex eating a fish. It's kind of old, but I figure he'd still like it. Say thanks, Brandon. Come on, turn around. You got it. Figure it out. There you go. So there you have it. Kind of what it's like to live with an alligator in your house. I felt odd, by the way, not having snakes or some sort of reptile for these clips. That's why I have random non-related snakes during the intro and outro. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed today's video and it gave you a little glimpse into our lives with Rex. Thanks for watching today's video and we'll see you next time.