When faced with a thirteen-foot alligator, most ordinary women, children, and men would run. Wes Moore is no ordinary man, instead, he chooses to spend his days with not one, but hundreds of alligators on his alligator farm in Summerdale.

Moore owns and operates Alligator Alley, a haven for “nuisance” alligators. His animals are alligators that developed a liking for pet dogs near a swamp in Florida, or liked to loiter a little too close to an Alabama Girl Scout camp. He defined a nuisance alligator as one who has lost their fear of humans, which makes them more dangerous to people and could also get the alligator into dangerous situations.

Moore doesn’t just hang around with your run-of-the-mill alligators. He fences himself in with hundreds of alligators three times daily; hundreds of alligators who expect to be fed whenever they see him. In fact, about fifteen minutes before each scheduled feeding time, alligators start heading towards the feeding site. Moore jokes, “When I run out of food, I run out of there!”

    Many would consider Moore a bit on the crazy side because of how he chooses to spend his days, but Moore wouldn’t have it any other way. He was introduced to alligators at a young age on his grandfather’s farm. He said that during a first encounter with an alligator people are either going to be fascinated or terrified. He was fascinated.

    Having a profession other than “the alligator man” is not something that Moore ever really wanted for himself. He attended Auburn University and received a degree in wildlife and fisheries, which works out great considering that he runs an alligator farm.

He loves his alligators. He said that his wife also scolds him because he always comes home dirty, but when you work in a swamp, trying to stay one step ahead of hundreds of alligators, being dirty comes with the territory.

He jokes that his wife tells him that he spends too much time with his alligators because he knows each of the adult alligators by name. He has named the meanest alligator, other than Captain Crunch, Hillary in honor of the former first lady. His alligators also include Nancy and Chili Dog.

    Despite his love for the creatures, Moore also said that he understands how powerful they are. He gets close to them, but he admits that he is scared of his alligators too. He said that these are huge, powerful and wild animals, so being a little afraid of what they are capable of is okay. Even though he is around them everyday, he said they still “scare the living daylights” out of him. His fear doesn’t stop him from pursuing his passion though. He gets close to his alligators because it gives his visitors a better experience. He does not get dangerously close; he won’t stick his head into the open mouth of one of his alligators. He said that “would be just plain stupid.”

    Moore strives to create an environment where his guests can see some alligators in their natural habitat, but he tries to not make it seem like a zoo. All of his employees, himself included, know a lot about alligators and are more than willing to share that information with visitors. Moore breeds alligators, but not to sell. Most of his baby alligators go to other facilities like Alligator Alley. Moore’s main goal is to educate people about alligators, not to exploit the alligators that he has on his property. He isn’t in it for the money, he is in it to save alligators.

    While he and his crew, for instance, were releasing a large alligator that had just arrived from the Birmingham Zoo, Moore yelled to his visitors that he was a little tied up right now, but if they had any questions just holler.

    Spend five minutes with Moore and his other family and you can tell that this man loves his job. As he calls out greetings to the alligators that gather on the water bank for a feeding time, it is like he is calling out to a friend that he saw last week. In a way he is. Moore spends hours each week with his alligators, and he is grateful that these animals have a place to go instead of being put down.

    Moore opened Alligator Alley in July of 2004, and has been amassing more alligators ever since, with no plans to stop anytime soon.