If you’ve ever been to Lakeland, Florida you can attest to the fact that it is an extremely weird city/county within an even weirder state. Up until I came across this news I thought that the only thing to come out of Lakeland were carnies/circus folk and citrus farmers. Well it turns out there’s a third type of person living in Lakeland, the type of person who raises a badass alligator as a pet and teaches it to ride motorcycles.
Mary Thorn lives in Lakeland and for the past 15-years she’s raised Rambo, her motorcycle riding dinosaur (alligator). According to Mary Thorn she treats her 15-year-old alligator Rambo ‘like a baby’, and it lives inside of the house with her. I know all of this because recently the state has stepped in and is trying to take Mary Thorn’s beloved Rambo away from her. They’re seeking to remove the alligator because state law stipulates that any alligators measuring 6-feet or more must reside on a 2.5+ acre plot of land, and Mary Thorn’s property checks in under the required amount of land.
On Monday Mary Thorn took to Facebook to plead her case, and since then the tale of the woman with a motorcycle riding alligator has gone viral, even garnering a local FOX News interview with Rambo the Alligator. Here’s what Mary had to say on Facebook:
This is really important to me. Rambo isn’t just another gator he’s part of my family.hes human more than he is gator.his disability will kill him he’s been raised inside a house all his life he is scared of the outside. People think I’m crazy but there were four when I started out. I tried treating them like gators they started to die sun senitive their immune system was shot so they catch illnesses easy rambo is the last one I nvr believed that he would live to be 6 ft but he has now they want him out side and want me to 2 1/3 a acres of land he can’t go out on land so wats the point he will die of sun exposure. In ten to thirty minutes .this makes no sense thought fwc was supposed to be for the animals why stress him out let him stay home.
Seems like Rambo’s living a pretty happy life to me, and as a native Floridian who is directly affected by this sort of insanity I see no problems whatsoever with Mary Thorn keeping her 15-year-old pet alligator. If there was one of those stupid ass petitions to sign, the ones that never accomplish anything, I’d totally sign it and support Mary in her bid to keep Rambo as a pet.
He certainly wouldn’t survive in the wild after a lifetime of being pampered, and he probably wouldn’t do well in a zoo either, surrounded by other alligators when all he’s ever known is Mary. Mary on the other hand knows more than a few alligators, and if this video’s to be believed then she certainly knows how to care for some gators:
For more on this developing story you can follow this link and click on over to Mashable!