The Exotic Animal Playground in Fort Myers is a new way for Southwest Floridians to get up close and personal with nature.<\/p>\n
Animals like raccoons, squirrel monkeys and kangaroos are just a few of the critters that can be held and pet to help encourage an appreciation for wildlife. The playground has animals most people won\u2019t ever have the opportunity to play with otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t really see otters in a lot of places and Otis is a blast,\u201d said Kayla Kocon, owner of Exotic Animal Playground.<\/p>\n
The facility is licensed by the USDA and the FWC to make sure both visitors and animals are in a pleasant and safe situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also have the USDA come and inspect, as well as, the FWC come and inspect,\u201d said Kocon<\/p>\n
The animals in the playground have all been deemed unreleasable meaning that they can\u2019t survive in the wild due to health issues or being born in captivity. Some of the animals have even been rescued from abusive and poor conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI call myself a private sanctuary because we do take in unreleasable rescues as well as some of the animals were born into licensed care so we take in all kinds of different animals,\u201d said Kocon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are all about the animals\u2019 well-being,\u201d Kocon explains.<\/p>\n
The animals decide if they want to show face and meet people each day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI take them all home at night and then if they need a break or if they become overstimulated or stressed, we won\u2019t bring them back that day or the next day. We\u2019ll give them as long a break as they need,\u201d said Kocon.<\/p>\n
The Exotic Animal Playground is open seven days a week in the Edison Mall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Exotic Animal Playground in Fort Myers is a new way for Southwest Floridians to get up close…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,325],"class_list":["post-65817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-lee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}