An outdoor adventure area in eastern North Carolina is also a recue for alligators, and shared a unique video on Facebook amid the chilly weekend temperatures.
"So, you can see just the nostrils sticking out of the water.”
The Shallotte River Swamp Park in Ocean Isle Beach offers ziplining, swamp tours, and an educational nature trail, but over the weekend shared a video of a phenomenon few get to see – alligators in a state of “suspended animation” after their swamp froze over.
The park is just north of the South Carolina border, and when temperatures dipped into the teens on Sunday, General Manager George Howard posted the video to Facebook.
"We've got alligators here that we take care of in the sanctuary,” he explained, “These are all rescues and their pond that they live in is frozen.”
He said the water was cold but the ice wasn’t that thick.
"Thick enough for these guys to do what they do, which is to stick their nose up out of the ice so that they can breathe and suspend themselves in the water,” Howard said. “They are in full brumation right now.”
Brumation is not true hibernation, but a period of sluggishness or inactivity in reptiles when it gets really cold.
The Swamp Park houses the rescued alligators in a fenced-off body of water near the Shallotte River just north of the South Carolina border.
