Insight with Chris Van Vliet - The Alligator Whisperer: Gabby Scampone on Wrestling and Rescuing Wild Alligators

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Gabby Scampone is a Veterinary Technician, Wildlife Educator and Alligator Trapping Agent. She joins Chris Van Vliet from her home in Sunrise, FL to talk about the incredible work that she does with alligators. She discusses how she rescues what are called "nuisance alligators" in Florida and safely relocates them while other companies would kill them. She also talks about how much alligators are misunderstood and what we can learn from them! For more information on Gabby visit her YouTube channel called "Flordia's Wildest": https://www.youtube.com/FloridasWildest If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blaine! Well, here it is, and here we go. Welcome back to another audio adventure on Insight. I'm Chris Banffley. Thank you so much for joining us on this one, and for a lot of you for joining us on every single episode. Hope you're having a great week.

Super grateful that you're here with us for this one. And chances are you've seen our guests today online, even if you haven't put two and two together, and you maybe don't recognize her name. But Gabby Scampone has gone viral quite a few times for her work with alligators. And we're talking big gators here. We're talking like 10, 12 foot alligators. She kisses them.

She wrestles them. She rescues them. And she swims with them. And if you've seen the photos or videos that I posted online of that one time that I swam with a giant alligator, the alligator's name. by the way, was Casper. Well, that was Gabby that made that all happen. Her and her boyfriend, Chris Gillette,

offer an experience in the Everglades where you can swim with an alligator. His name is Casper. And you can take underwater photos. And trust me, swimming with an alligator sounds a lot scarier than it really is. If you live in Florida

or you're traveling to Florida, I can't recommend this enough. And we'll talk about it a bunch here, but man, what an experience. Really, though, at the heart of this conversation is just about finding your passion and turning your passion into your career. Now, more than any other time in history, you should absolutely not be doing something for a living that you hate. Let me say that one more time. You should absolutely not be doing something for a living that you hate.

and in a perfect world, you shouldn't be doing something that you even dislike for a living. And I hope that Gabby's story can light a fire in you and make you chase after those dreams that you have. Give her a follow on social media.

She's at Gabby Nicole. That's G-A-B-B-B-Y-N-I-K-O-L-E. That's on both Instagram and TikTok. I recently joined TikTok, by the way. Just hit 10,000 followers on there. So if you happen to be on TikTok. I'm at chris.com. And then I'm at Chris Van Fleet on Instagram and Twitter.

And also make sure to follow or subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to this right now. Okay. Without further ado, let's dive into this one. Ha! Ah, dive in. I didn't even mean to do that. Yeah, get it with the water? I love it. Please welcome. Gabby, scampone. Gabby, it's so good to see you. Thank you for joining us. Of course. It's been a while.

It has been a while. And it's going to be a strange statement for me to say this. But the last time I saw you and Chris, we were swimming with an alligator. Yes, we were. Yeah. Yep. Whenever I post that video or post those photos, people just like, there's this very visceral reaction, right? I'm sure you get this all the time. It's on one end of the spectrum or the other. Either that is so cool or you are absolutely crazy. I would never do that. This must be something you deal with every day. That's my life working with alligators.

Either they are super tame, you raise it from a baby. They love you. They're a puppy dog or you're crazy. That thing's going to eat you. You're an idiot. So it's the truth is somewhere in the middle, but people often think of things in extremes. So. Well, you're quick to remind people.

These are wild alligators and anything could happen at any point in time. Definitely. Yeah. So what is the work that you're doing right now? with alligators. So, I mean, I'm still rescuing them. I've been a state license alligator trapping agent for four years since I moved to Florida, essentially. Yeah. And I just, I'm still rescuing them out of people's backyards. This month alone, I think we got three babies out of swimming pools. So, yeah. So when someone has an alligator, and this happens every

once in a while in Florida, someone has an alligator in their backyard, they call to have it removed. and you show up? Yeah, so it's the way I explain it, it's basically like how a police officer has their own jurisdiction, their own area. So I do northern Broward County with like three other people, like a very small team

or two other people, there's three of us. And you can't call us directly. You have to call the nuisance alligator hotline. Isn't that so funny? We have like a nuisance alligator hotline in Florida. So you call them and then they issue out the permit to whoever's area it is.

So if it's in Broward County, we're going to get the permit and then we respond. I imagine most people don't have the alligator nuisance hotline, you know, handy. Most people are probably calling 911. Oh, my God, there's an alligator in my pool. And then 911 says, actually, I call this number. Yeah, yep. So what do you do when you get there and there's an alligator in somebody's backyard?

What happens from there? We catch it. What do you mean? What do we do? How do you catch an alligator? All right. So most trappers choose to kill the alligator. So in the state of Florida, you don't get paid for being an alligator trapper due to liability, right?

So that way, if you go out, you get your arm ripped off, you get a little soon card. You don't get paid, you know. Hope your arm grows back, yeah. Exactly. So that's how most trappers make their money. So they catch them a little bit differently since they're just going to kill them. They'll put out like a baited hook and the gator swallow it kind of gets stuck in the stomach and then they shoot it. So the way we do it, we physically have to be there when the alligator's there.

We use like just a really big fishing cool with a treble hook and we cast over their back and we snag hook them. And that's the way we catch it. So definitely takes a lot of skill. I feel like that's only part of it, though. That's getting the alligator to shore maybe. It is. Yeah.

Then what happens? Well, usually you're fighting with them in the water for like 20 minutes. They are just so strong and they're death rolling and they're trying to get away. So once you pull them up, most of the time they're pretty exhausted. So when we get them on land, we noose them around their neck, we pull them up. You can use like a towel to throw over their head so they can't really jump on the back. And then you carefully close the jaws, tape the jaws. And then I put them in my Honda Civic and drive them to the sanctuary.

Hold on. You put an alligator in your Honda Civic. I have a Honda Civic hatchback. and I've had multiple alligators in there at a time. What, okay. It's one being eight and a half feet long. Everyone loves that. When you don't have an alligator in there, what is your civics smell like?

It actually doesn't smell. I swear, it really doesn't. Alligators don't really smell. Okay. So is this like a job? You're not getting paid to do this? It's a volunteer position. Yeah, I do not get paid.

I pay for all my own gas, toll. everything. The wear and tear in the car, tools to get to the alligator. Yeah. Okay. Now let's back it up. We've talked about wrestling alligators and rescuing alligators. How did you get to this point? You're originally from New York State. So how did you get to Florida with alligators? Yeah. Well, I have loved animals my whole life, just even as like a child, just going out catching turtles and frogs in New York. And then as I got bigger, the animals got bigger. So like when I was a teenager, I started catching like really big snapping turtles and going to look for like rattlesnakes and stuff. And I started volunteering with animals at a nature center

when I was 15. And ever since then, I've just been volunteering somewhere with animals. But I got to the point where I was driving like an hour north, three times a week and then an hour south, two times a week, just to volunteer with animals because it's so limited in New York. So then I started following people on Instagram who were messing with alligators in Florida. And I'm like, I can be doing that, you know. So I came down, visited, saw just like how many animals there are. And just like the wading birds and like the migratory birds, there's just so much wildlife in Florida. And then I moved here in 2017.

I started volunteering at the Everglades Outpost. That's where I started to work with alligators and got connected with the man that I trapped underneath his license, Paul. And he taught me basically everything I know about trapping. And this, you moved there in 2017, a year later. You have this video of you scrubbing an alligator, which for you is like routine. You're scrubbing it with like a giant broom. Yeah.

Video goes viral. And I would have to think that things really change for you from there. Yeah, it was crazy because I was scrubbing alligators every day at my life at that point. And I had posted videos before just. kind of from like my point of view, so you could see like the brush in there and his back, but never with me actually in the video. So I posted it, like not thinking anything of it. And it just like blew up.

It was crazy. So where, how did things change after that video went everywhere? Well, I went from, I think like 15,000, uh, Instagram followers like 50,000 in like two days.

It was on like AOL. Every time I opened Facebook, I was just like the, front like on the front of the page it was it was crazy i got flown at the tennessee to be a guest on the pickler and ben show and talk about it so it definitely made my platform a lot bigger gave me like a just a really big platform to talk about alligators and educate people so i'm really grateful for that video but i also think what it did is it made people realize that people like you do this and i think that people think like i think that often people think when dealing with alligators it's like a

swamp people type of thing. And I think that those TV shows have definitely made that like a stereotype. And they see someone like you doing. They go, oh my gosh, if Gabby can do it, maybe I can do it or anybody can do it. Yeah. I have a lot of people send me the swamp people clips and things like that because they kill the alligators. And a lot of people are actually really angry because they follow me. And I'll get a lot of responses like, you know, I never liked the alligators until I started following you. And now I love them. And like, I hate watching this stuff on TV. like why aren't you on TV? Why are these people on TV? Why aren't you on TV?

I don't know. It's hard. I've spoken to probably over 100 producers, and they all, you know, how they are. They all promise things. And it's just so hard. And honestly, I would rather do my own thing at this point, like our YouTube channel where we have full creative control. Even like the interviews that I've done or people that have come see me in the Aligators, they want like ridiculous stuff or they want me to like put myself in danger for views and things like that. And I'm not really about that. I don't want people to think that alligators are monsters. So I'm not going to show that side of them, you know? Yeah.

Why do you think there is this misconception? Sharks have it too, but alligators might even have it worse. Why do you think that people are so scared of alligators? I mean, it's like the same thing as pit bulls. You only see on the news the bad side of them. We have two million alligators in the state of Florida. If they wanted to kill and eat people, we would have hundreds of people dying every single day

and people don't think like that. Everybody still refers to the little boy in Disney that got killed a couple years ago. You know, that's all I hear about. Oh, yeah, they don't eat people. Tell that to his family. It's like, okay, it does happen, especially when you put, unfortunately, a small child

in knee-deep water at dust where there's alligators, like it definitely happens, but they're not out breaking into people's homes trying to eat you. They're not chasing you down the street. You know, even if you swim, most of the time they're going to leave you alone. Of course, swimming is not recommended because a lot of alligator attacks do happen when people are in the water. But they really don't want anything to do with people. If they did, my job as a trapper would be so easy. I'm like teasing them, yeah.

We were talking about swimming with alligators at the start of this episode. I should reference that this was an experience that I. was part of. We were making a TV segment out of this, but actually anybody can do it. It's a very, Casper is the alligator's name. And you guys have had him in, or Chris has had him in captivity for how many years is it? I know Chris has known him for 12 years personally. Yeah. So he might have been in captivity even before that. He was caught as a nuisance alligator. I've known Casper for four years. He's just a really chill alligator. So explain what this, experience is for people who are either interested or just can't even believe that we're talking about

this. Definitely. So it's a little bit different than when you did it. When you did it, there was no net. And then shortly after that, even though we have a perfect track record, not a single injury, not even a stubbed toe, FWC came in and said that we were endangering the public and wanted to like hit us with a felony charge. So yeah, so we had to put a net up. So now there is like a little net barrier. You can still get super close to Casper. You're in the water in a 30,000 gallon crystal clear lagoon face to face with an alligator, just watching him swim around underwater. Chris can get awesome photos of people, like professional underwater photos with an alligator. It's truly like once in a lifetime experience. Oh, yeah. I thought I was going to be like freaking out when I was in there.

It's so peaceful. Yeah, it was so peaceful and like serene to see this incredible beast in this habitat where you're just a spectator. Yeah. Most people see alligators, obviously, in the water, but never under the water. So you're never going to get to experience that anywhere else. And alligators just, they truly are so graceful and beautiful and effortless when they're swimming. Well, look, alligators are part of your everyday life. I lived in Florida for five years.

I feel like I had to go out of my way to see allegations. Like I would go to, I think the first alligator I saw, I was at Lake Okeechobee and I was out fishing and I'm like, oh my God, there's an alligator right there. But I don't feel like they're as common as people who live in the other 49 states might think that they are. Yeah, I mean, we see a lot of alligators in places like Parkland. So Parkland is like right, literally right across the street from the Everglades. Yeah.

And we have this one area where there's like an alligator on every single pond because they have dug out ponds basically to elevate the houses. And now all of those ponds, the alligators just walk across the street and they are in this neighborhood now. You know, so it does happen in the canals, the man-made canals. Alligators walk. They go through culvert pipes. Everything is connected.

So, I mean, they are there. So when you talk about these nuisance alligators, what exactly is a definition of a nuisance gator? Any alligator that is deemed a threat to a person, a pet, or a livestock. So if the alligator is literally just sitting there in the canal in your backyard and minding its own business and you don't want it there, it's a nuisance. And then you take it, put in your Honda Civic. I do. And then where does it go to from there?

Yeah, most of them go to the Everglades outpost and Homestead. It's a nonprofit animal sanctuary. I think they're at like 584 alligators or something like that now. Did all these alligators have names? No, well, no. just because we can't tell them all of her. But we definitely have maybe like 30 or 40 of them that are named trained that come to their names. But I mean, all of these alligators are wild alligators.

So just because they're in captivity doesn't mean they're friendly. Like they will mess you up. And you have to relocate them because if you just put them somewhere else, they'll come back to where you took them from, right? Yeah, yeah. That's what FWC says. So that that's why it's illegal. The only two options for a nuisance alligator, you have to kill it or you have to

have to keep it in captivity. Under four feet can be relocated because they're like that big and they're not considered a threat. But most of the gators would catch her over four feet. I like how a four foot alligator to you is nothing. A four foot alligator to the average person is like, oh, they're so small. More foot alligator, the average person is like, oh my God, that's a four foot alligator. Yeah, the four footers can't do much unless you are going out of your way to mess with them. So take me back here to when you're a kid. You love it. animals. Did you ever think that there'd be the opportunity to work with them for a living? I don't know. I remember watching Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin. I, like, loved both of them.

I was like, five or six years old. I would watch them all the time. And I'm like, I can be doing this. Like, this is what I want to do. I never thought that I would be working with dangerous predators like this. But I remember thinking, like, I really want to do this. What was the most dangerous predator, dangerous animal that you had in New York? Probably just the birds of prey. Yeah, that's really it. I mean, they'll still mess you up if you don't know what you're doing. But for a while, I was volunteering with birds of prey, and I loved that.

That was awesome. So you moved down to Florida. Walk me through your first alligator encounter. Honestly, I don't remember. You don't remember your first one? It was so long ago. I see alligators every single day of my life. I do not remember my first experience with an alligator.

I was really excited. Do you remember the first time that you relocated one or rescued one? I don't think so. This is amazing. I don't think so. I remember the first time I did a face off, which is the trick where you open the alligator's mouth and you put your chin. I remember that because that was terrifying.

Yeah. So you did like a show, a demonstration. where you were basically wrestling alligators. Yep. How do you learn how to do this? Carefully. You don't mess up. Really with alligators,

I mean, there's some things you can learn when they're taped, obviously, you know, like where to how to jump on them, where your hand should be like placement, things like that. But for like the face off

and things where they're untaped, you can't learn the face off with a taped alligator. So you just got to do it and hope that you don't mess up. What's the closest call that you've had? Well, a few times. This was after I was like good.

A few times I've been doing the face off. And when the mouth's open, I put my hand inside of the mouth. And if anything touches the jaws, the jaws will slam shut. So I've had like sand fall in the alligator's mouth and you just see him flinch. And you're like, oh, please don't. So I've never had them, you know, snap my arm off or bite me. But yeah, it was, it was sketchy. But if you do the face off properly, like, you're supposed to be able to jaw pop them off your face and they can't get you.

Chris has done that before. So basically you're like this with the alligator's mouth. And then when you touch it, they close in front of you if you do it correctly. So I've done that before. And that's terrifying. That sounds insane. Yeah. Because what, I mean, what's the strength of an alligator's jaw?

Full grown alligator has like so many PSI, right? Yeah, like 20,000 pounds per square inch. That's crazy. It's like a truck. Yeah, it's crazy. So we'd tear your arm right off. They are insanely strong. What other animals are you working with there?

At the outpost. Well, just in general. You're dealing with a lot of animals in your day to day. I mean, you want to know what's at my house right now. I'll run me through the animals at my house. Yeah, tell me about the rescue you. have at your house. Yeah, literally the rescue that we're running from our house. I think we're at close to like 40 animals right now. Okay, what's in your house? Okay, but people hear that.

People hear that and they're, oh, you guys are hoarders. Like, definitely not. We don't take on more than we can handle. We have like 13 chickens. We have a pig. We have a cat with no eyes. We have a dog that was like rescued from Texas. The pig was dumped on the side of the road. We've had her for like a year and a half. We're at seven birds right now. I know. I just rescued a hornbill on Father's Day. A hornbill.

Where are our hornbills from? Africa and Asia. This one was an African one. So unfortunately, the hornbills from Africa are easily imported. This is like the one from the Lion King, right? Zazu. Yeah. So I have a Vonder Deccans, which is the exact one in the Lion King.

I actually raised him. He was not a rescue. He's an educational animal. But the Redbilled Hornbeckons. little petri that we caught just in Florida. It was just in someone's backyard? Yeah. I was tracking this bird for two weeks with a pair of rescue.

Like, it was probably the most difficult rescue that I've done. Not because, like, necessarily the catch was hard. It's just, it was all over Facebook. So he was on the next door app. He was on Facebook. I had people like screenshoting, like, posts to me and sending them on Instagram and then you have to figure out which group that was posted in. You have to be accepted into the group. You have to message the person explaining like, hey, I've been trying to catch this

hornbell. And by the time they answer, the bird is gone or like they never see your message. So by the time people would message me, they're like, it flew off like four hours ago. And I'm like, oh my God. So for two weeks every day, just scrolling, Facebook, like, where is he now? Where is he now? It was crazy. Well, how did you finally track him then? So on Father's Day. He was quiet for like a week. So this gentleman reached out to me originally and said that the bird has been in his yard for the past three days. And every day it would go there. And I'm like, okay, this is perfect.

So I went to his house. And he just slept an hour ago. And we were staked out at his house for like four hours and he never came back. So then we didn't really hear about the bird for like four days. And then he was found like half hour away. And I'm like, okay, now he's in this area and we never saw him. And people kept posting this hornbow literally looking at them through the window, like trying to break in their house because he knows that there's food in there. Yeah.

So then on Father's Day, Susan at Palm Beach Parat Rescue, I was working with her very closely on this. She gave me a tip that it was in someone's backyard. And I think it was Locksahatchee or Boyton Beach. I don't remember, but it was like 45 minutes away from me. And she's like, just drop everything and go there now. So I'm like on the phone with the guy, like rushing over. He's like, oh, you better hurry because he's in my backyard right now. He's like looking for bugs, but I don't know how long he's going to be here.

And I'm like, I am driving as fast as I can. Just try to keep him there. Try to like open the door. If you have like a screen, like get him in the screen, like do something. He's like, okay, I'll do my best. So I'm driving and I'm like 15 minutes away. And the guy calls me back. I'm like, oh my God, he's calling to tell me it flew away.

Like there's no way. He's like, okay, Gabby, you're not going to believe this. He's in my living room. So he opened the door and the bird flew right in his living room. I have a video of me with the net chasing this hornbill from Africa around someone's living room. So if this story's fantastic. You can't make this up, yeah. If the bird didn't go in the living room, how were you going to catch a bird in someone's backyard just out in the open?

So our original plan was to try to use superworms because my hornbilt loves superworms. So we were going to use a really big carrier, kind of like tie a string to the door and see if we can get him in that way and shut it. That's what we were going to do. And then people were saying that he was allowing them to get close enough or potentially you could grab them. So at the time, that's what we were going to do. Knowing what I know now, that would not have worked because this bird is so fast. We have an aviary for him.

I can't even catch him in his aviary. He's so quick. Wow. Okay. He's loving with you now. He is. Yeah. No one came forward for him.

No one was looking for him. So what I think is that unfortunately he was imported from Africa, probably. you know, 50 birds, they imported all of them. He took off and the person just didn't realize. Because no one is looking for him. And this bird was on the news. He was all over social media. And I know if I lost any of my birds, I would be going crazy.

Wow. As a matter of fact, I did lose one of my birds last Thursday. I don't know if you saw my story. I was a basket case. We got him back, though. He was in the neighbor's yard. So what's the plan with this horn bill? We're just going to keep him and let him,

live out his life. Wow. Yes. Now we have two hornbills. Wow. You have so many animals there. Yeah, we do. Yeah, most of them are reptiles. So that doesn't really count. Like tortoises. Of course they count. Come on. It's so easy. It's like if you have the reptiles hear that. If you have one, you might as well have like five. You know, I think we're at like seven tortoises right now. But they all eat the same thing. They all like live in the same area. So they're pretty easy. We have like 15 snakes. Are these big tortoises? Like, they're redfoot tortoises. So, like, 10 pounds. These are the ones that are going to outlive you, right? Yeah, I mean, a lot of them do. Even the parrots, potentially, depending on the

species, they kill it like 80 years. People don't realize that. Wow. What was this video with the ball python recently that really also got a lot of eyes on you? Yeah, that like changed our life a little bit. So it was at Markham Park. Do you know where that is? It's in the West. That's where we catch alligators, actually. I've been fishing there. Yeah. Have you seen any alligators there? No, I haven't. There's lots. There are lots. So they knew Paul and I, because we catch alligators there. And I guess a family saw this ball python. So this is a ball python from Africa. This is not the Burmese python. That's invasive. This is a pet. You can buy him at Pet Gofer. They're like the most common snake people buy.

Exactly. Yep. Yeah. So somebody, I guess, dumped this snake that they didn't want anymore. It was very obviously dumped. If you know, Markham Park, you know, there's not houses around. There's like a highway. It was intentionally put there.

And she was just hiding in like a little tree stump. So we went to go catch her. And I pulled her out expecting her to bite me. She did not bite me. She was super chill, pulled her out. She had ticks all over her. like big ticks on her face, like in her heat pits. She had a little tiny ticks under every single one of her scales.

We physically removed 120 ticks and there was still more. Like we couldn't get them all. So we took her to the vet. We did a story rehabbing her and her video just blew up. She got like 50 million views. I think she got more than me scrubbing the alligator. Yeah, I feel like this video is getting more attention than that. Yeah, it just took up.

And we weren't expecting it. I wasn't even going to post the video. I'm like, yeah, it's a Bull Python. And, you know, like my horn bill from Africa got nothing, like no views. But, you know, the Ball Python did be million. It's just crazy. You never know what's going to go viral. The United States Soccer Federation present the U.S. soccer podcast.

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I worked in a pet store when I was in high school. I worked in the fish and reptile apartment, actually. And the reptile that we sold more than anything, well, bearded pythons, leopard geckos, and then it was ball pythons. Yeah. They were like such a popular animal. So I think that maybe people can look at that and relate and go, oh, I either had a ball python or I know somebody that did. That's what we're thinking. And a lot of the comments were like, oh, I have, I have a ball python.

I can never imagine doing this. Tons of people. I hate snakes, but this changed my opinion. I never thought I would love a snake. Like, you can tell this snake is so grateful for you, which, I mean, I don't necessarily think she's grateful or loves us. But, you know, I'm glad that people think that. And I can change opinions, you know.

She's a really sweet snake. She has never tried to bite us. We were literally ripping ticks off for her, did not try to bite us. We had to give her antibiotic injections for a couple weeks. Didn't try to bite us. She's a really good snake. So all of this that you're talking about, all stems from a love that you have for animals. Yeah, absolutely.

This is so well. Okay, so where does it go from here? What, what's the ultimate goal for you? animals. To have my own sanctuary. That is what I want. I want to rescue animals full time. And I feel like I'm almost there. My day job is a veterinary technician because I don't get paid for any of the rescues that I do. We recently made a YouTube channel a couple of years ago so like we can share with people like what we do and kind of get more attention. And we're hoping that like one day our YouTube is able just to support our rescue and fund our lives, rescuing these.

animals, but we're not quite yet. But I would love to have my own place where we can bring all the nuisance alligators, have giant aviaries for all the birds that need homes. Your YouTube channel is blowing up because I remember the last time I saw you, which was a little over two years ago. I think maybe you had 15 or 20,000 subscribers at the time. Yeah, I mean, it's all because of that Bull Python video. It really is.

We were at, I think, 20,000 in January. and then we caught TikTok. We named her TikTok, the bull python. We got her in February, and now we're at like 120,000 subscribers. Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. Yeah.

And Chris, who's your boyfriend, which we keep referencing, he's who I was actually swimming with, with Casper. He takes these incredible photos of all of these animals as well. He really does. He does a really good job.

And he's the one, If anybody has seen these photos of me swimming with Casper, the beautiful alligator, Chris is the one who took these photos. Yeah, he's really talented. So people can still do these tours where you swim underwater tour with an alligator? Yep. Is that happening every week? Yeah, he mostly does him Fridays and Saturdays every single week. If you want to book a private tour during the week, all you have to do is email him and you can set that up as well.

But yeah. I don't know how like every YouTuber is not trying to swim with Casper. I know. A lot of these big YouTubers are actually a little bit nervous. We've had like quite a few that are. No, really? Yeah. And a lot of guys are nervous too.

I've noticed the ladies are a little bit more adventurous. The guys are like, oh, no, no, no, not for me. Is there any animal that makes you nervous? I don't like spiders. Oh. I don't like crabs. What? I do not like crabs.

I don't know what it is about them. I like them from a distance. I don't like crabs. Is there running any spider rescuing that you have to do? Oh, no. That is not for me. I mean, I've never been put in that situation. Maybe if there was like a pet tarantula or something,

I've someone dumped that needed help, I can go, like, sweep it up with a broom or something. But I don't like spiders. I just don't. This is just so funny to me. They can live in my house. I have one in my bathroom that is just kind of in the corner and I let him. The tarantula?

No, no. It's like a daddy long leg or something. Yeah. Now that I'm living in California, I saw a tarantula on a hike the other day. Yeah. Like a wild one. Yeah. And then it got chased down by a, what was it called?

It got chased down by a wasp, which then we watched this tarantula get killed. It was the wildest thing to see. Yeah. Tarantula hawk. Tarantula hawk. You need to Google this. I don't know if I want to. The tarantula hawk is like a giant wasp that like eats tarantulas.

Oh my God. And were there admiring this beautiful tarantula and then out of nowhere this wasp comes behind and we're like, oh, that's weird. That wasp is going to die. This tarantula is going to eat it. And the exact opposite thing happened. That is traumatizing. Yeah. So we go to Peru. Once in a while, we go to Costa Rica a lot, and there are tarantulas, both of those places, and, like, giant scorpions and things like that. And Chris will always be like, oh, my God, look, there's a scorpion eating a cockroach. We got to film this for you to. I'm like, oh, absolutely not. I am like down the trail. And he's like, oh, my God, this is amazing. No, no, no, not for me.

So what's number one? If those are the things you don't want to spend any time with, what's number one on the list for you? that I want to spend time with. Yes. Your favorite animal. How about your favorite animal that you work with and then what you haven't worked with that you'd like to? Okay, my favorite animal to work with is an alligator. I know that sounds like so cliche.

I love alligators. I love working with them. I love what I do. And then I've always wanted to work with otters. And then recently this year, I got a chance to meet some otters. and I don't know if I want to work with them anymore. What do you mean? They're really stinky, like really bad.

Everything about them. They're really cute. I'm glad I got to meet them, but I don't know if I want to work with them anymore. I really want to meet a Binturong. What is that? Like, I don't even know how to explain to you. You're going to have to look it up.

They're kind of like bear cats. They're from Asia. I'm going to look this up. They smell like popcorn. A Binturong. Bin? Don't ask me. You don't even want to know how I'm trying to spell this, by the way.

Oh, wow. What is that thing? Isn't that amazing? I don't know. It's like a, it's almost like a wolverine looking thing. They are so cool. Binturong. I use like the name.

And they smell like hot buttered popcorn, literally. That's like their scent. What? Wow. Yeah. Since you love alligators and you work with them. much. Give us some fun facts about alligators that would surprise us. Well, they can hold their breath, depending on the size. They can hold their breath potentially up to eight hours. That's pretty

incredible. How were they breathing? They just lower their heart rate? Yeah, they just kind of, they lower their heart rate and they have the ability kind of shut off organs to kind of like bypass the oxygen to save the oxygen. It's really cool. Yeah. Also, they're I was blown away when you told me that they didn't need to eat very often. They don't. Yeah, a large alligator can go eight, nine months without eating. Well, what does it eat eight or nine months before that? Like a deer or something.

Okay. I mean, it's not fun. It's kind of like how people can go months without eating. Like, it's going to suck, but you can do it, you know? I've seen very skinny alligators, very unhappy alligators, and they are still. live. It's crazy. What are alligators eating most of the time? I would say, well, okay, so alligators, some of them are specialists. So some of them get really good at catching and eating one thing, and that's all they'll eat. So some alligators only eat snails. They figure out they can

eat snails, and then they'll only eat snails. Some are really good at catching fish, and they'll only eat fish. Some are really good at catching dogs, and they'll eat dogs. but they'll eat birds, they'll eat frogs, snakes. They really, for the most part, will eat anything. I feel like the alligator that eats snails is probably going to never have any problem finding snails. Yeah. What's really sad is that, so we see a lot of alligators with injuries from other alligators. You know, and sometimes we'll see the entire top jaw missing.

So they can't really hunt, but if they can figure out how to eat snails, they're good. Some alligators don't figure it out and they die. They just don't know that they can eat snails. They just haven't done it. The alligators eat other alligators? They will. Like big ones will eat small ones, but it's very, I feel like blown out of proportion. You know, people think alligators are like crazy and territorial and they're going to tear each other apart.

You see alligators in captivity and in the wild laying on top of each other, swimming together. during the dry season, I mean, if there's like a small little body of water, you'll see a hundred alligators in there at a time. So they are social animals, just people don't see that side of them. These might be the most misunderstood animals. They are those and pit bulls and snakes. Seriously, I mean, it's all- And sharks. Sharks, too. Like I went to, I went to Shark Valley, which is in the Everglades. It's a bike path. I'm explaining this for people who have never been there. There's a bike path where you ride a but there's alligators on the bike path.

Yeah. And you would think that this is a terrifying and scary thing. The alligators don't even care that you're there. They don't. They really don't. Yeah. If someone has an alligator in their backyard, what should they do? Well, I'm not really supposed to like...

Call you, right? Just call you. I wish. I mean, I am a very big, advocate of learning how to coexist with animals, learning the animals in your area, getting familiar with them, and just educating yourself and learning to coexist. I think a lot of this fear is coming from just ignorance, just not knowing enough about the animal. Yeah. You know, so a lot of people will call us and say, I want this alligator remove because I have

small children. And it's like, okay, I understand, but if I remove this alligator, another alligator is going to take its place. So you should never, regardless, put your kids in that situation where they can get hurt by an alligator. Yeah. You know, that's like the biggest thing. But when you say coexist, just kind of let them do their thing and you do your thing. Yeah. Like, not like going down to the pond and feeding them. Definitely not. It's actually illegal in Florida to feed alligators. A fed alligator is a dead alligator. Once you feed that alligator, it's going to start associating people's food. And that's where it does get dangerous. And we have removed alligators that have walked up to us before because people are feeding them. Yep.

We got one at a shooting range. How dangerous that. It would literally hear people walk up and come out of the water looking for food. So if you're shooting and you have like your, what is it, headphones, earmuffs, whatever, the protective gear is. Yeah, the ear protectors. You don't see that alligator. That's a dangerous situation. Never feed alligators. They are doing just fine, you know, without your hot. Yeah, they've existed for how many. Millions of years? Yep. Yeah, pretty much.

How many millions of years is it? So they share a common ancestor with dinosaurs. So that body type has been around for millions of years. That's crazy. That's crazy. Wild. Oh, it is crazy. Yep.

When people look at what you do, Gabby, and go, you are crazy to do this. What's your general response to those people? I honestly try not to spend. too many times, too much time on trolls. I'm just so used to it at this point, but I do think it's sad. You know, I think it's sad that people just, they don't know enough about it. And a lot of people are willing to learn, but a lot of people also aren't. They're very close-minded and no matter what you tell them, they don't want to hear it. I can talk until I'm blue in the face and show you the videos of me habituating alligators on their back, calling them out by name,

having them station and wait and open their mouths when you tell them to open and go back on the water when you tell them to go back. And they're still going to be like, yeah, well, what about the kid in Disney? Tell that to his parents. And it's like you try to explain why that happened. Those alligators there are fed. It was dark. You put a child in the water. And they just don't want to hear it.

So some people, you just can't change their minds. But the education that you're doing is incredible. And if people aren't following you on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, they should. because I've learned so much just watching your videos. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I do really enjoy educating people and especially changing opinions and just teaching people like what to look out for.

This is normal. This is not normal. I've had so many people reach out to me and say that they've learned so much, you know, or they're able to now educate their neighbors on not to feed alligators or not to let their dogs buy the water, you know, so it's awesome. What I love about this is, at the heart of this is just passion. You have such a passion for what you do. And I think that

whatever your passion is, I think that if you can follow that, it's that old cliche that you'll never work a day in your life. Yeah. Thank you. I feel so grateful that I'm able to rescue animals. And it takes so much time, like literal blood, sweat, tears and a lot of money. And I don't even care because I just want to rescue animals. And that's all I want to do, just rescue animals full time. I don't care if I have to drive an hour away to rescue a duck. I'll do it. I love that you use the word grateful because I end every conversation with this question because I love gratitude.

I think that it's like the thing that just fuels all of us. If you can be grateful, how could you possibly be in a bad mood? What are three things in your life that you're grateful for right now? Well, I'm very grateful for my parents. They were always very supportive of me. Even though they didn't understand it, they weren't animal people. My mom would drive me all the time to go volunteer at all these places. She would drive me an hour away.

She really helped me advance my career and supported me when I moved to Florida. So I'm definitely grateful for my family. I'm very grateful for my boyfriend. I am so lucky to have a partner that shares the same dreams as me, the same hobbies, the same love for animals. So I'm very grateful for him. And I'm just overall grateful for all of my personal animals. I love every single one of them

and I'm just so grateful for them. I really am. We're grateful for alligators. Yes, very grateful for alligators. Misunderstood cuties. That's what they are. They are. Gabby, so good to see you.

Thank you so much for those. Of course, this is so much fun. Thank you. You're the best. Thank you. Whatever you want to come to with Casper again, you just let us know whenever you're down here. Next time I'm in Florida.

Absolutely. We're going to make this happen. Absolutely. Thank you. You're welcome. There we go, my friends. Passion. Passion is the secret sauce of life. Big thanks to Gabby for sharing her story with us on this episode and a huge thank you to you for sharing some of your day with us. And if this spoke to you, take a screenshot, share it with someone who you know will love it and tag us on social media. Gabby is at Gabby Nicole. I'm at Chris Van Fleet. And since we talk to you.

so much about passion and chasing your dreams. I will leave you with this quote from the great Vincent Van Gogh, who said, I would rather die of passion than of boredom. Be great, be grateful, we'll see you on the next one for some

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