The Story of CAKES Alligators

Kane & Elaine, owners of CAKES AlligatorsHi, I'm Kane.

I've had a love of nature since I was a young boy. It all started when I was about 9 years old and I developed an interest in reptiles as me and my mates would often go out catching the likes of lizards and slow worms.

By about 13 years old, I was regularly out catching Grass Snakes and Adders.

And at that time I took an interest in all kinds of exotics including snakes, spiders, Gekos, frogs, toads, lizards etc. (I remember my Mum wasn't best pleased!)

Later on when I turned 15 in 1975, I managed to get what would be the first of my crocodilia; it was a Spectacled Caiman.

Just a year later though in 1976 the Dangerous Wild Animals Act came about, at which point I had decided to give up the Caiman and just stick to the animals that I was allowed.

Then I turned 20, which is when I met a very special girl, called Elaine. She was fascinated by the fact that I used to walk around the country side and our neighbourhood with 2 fox cubs that I often walked on leashes. To this day I don't know whether it was me or the cubs that won her heart (although I suspect it was actually the cubs).

After a short courtship, as youngsters do, we went our own ways and had seperate families.

Destiny would then bring us back together which is when we realised our shared love of animals and a zest for life. After several years of romancing, I asked Elaine's Dad if he would do me the honour of allowing me to marry his daughter, which is exactly what happened on Summer Solstice, 21 June 2016.

Some years before we married, we made a pact to try and help conserve a critically endangered species. We had thought long and hard about what animal this may be, but we just knew it had to be something that was low in numbers in its native habitat. We also wanted that species to be difficult to breed in order to really test our capabilities.

Along came fate - we walked into a reptile shop and saw the most stunning grey eyed Chinese Alligator (Latin name Alligator Sinensis) with which we both immediately fell in love with.

We rushed home, to gather as much information that we could from books, the Internet and any other source we could find on Chinese Alligators. Information on the species turned out to be very limited.

Luckily, once again fate played its hand when a friend of ours in the exotic business who we had told about our dreams previously, phoned us one day to say he was off to Hamm in Germany to a reptile convention and that he'd been talking to a gentleman who had a pair of Chinese Alligators for sale.

And that's where the journey of 'CAKES Alligators' began.. we're now learning every day as we watch our Chinese Alligator collection grow and we're developing a large knowledge base of the species; we're also able to share our knowledge with different organisations.

PS Cakes stands for: Chinese Alligators Kane Elaine Sinensis