mobanmarketKEY WEST, FL — A Florida inmate working as a trustee at a children’s animal farm on the grounds of the Monroe County Jail was accused of animal cruelty earlier this week after he fed an iguana to one of two young alligators at the facility.
“He threw this iguana into that alligator pen there and then the alligator dispatched of it,”Adam Linhardt of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office told Patch on Thursday. “He later admitted to that.”
Jason Aaron Gibson, 40, was charged with cruelty to animals in connection with the incident that occurred Sunday at the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Children’s Animal Farm.
Carol Lyn Parrish of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission told Patch iguanas are considered a non-native species in Florida and therefore not protected by state law.
But Linhardt said iguanas are protected from cruelty. “My understanding is that it’s not the status for the type of animal that is dispatched. It’s the manner in which the animal is dispatched,” he explained.
The incident occurred Sunday when the farm was closed to the public. The facility is only open to visitors on the second and fourth Sundays of each month.
“The iguana was not an official resident of the animal farm,” Linhardt said. “It was just a kind of passerby of the animal farm that lived there but he wasn’t fed or cared for in any way. He just took refuge under one of our sheds and was known to farmer Jeannie as Mojo.”
Linhardt said the children’s farm has two resident alligators — Irwin and Boots — neither of which are fully grown. He didn’t know which one ate the iguana.
There is no traditional zoo in Monroe County, which includes the city of Key West, according to Linhardt.
The children’s farm was started by the late former Sheriff Richard Roth, who was looking for a way to save a flock of Muscovy ducks and chickens that were regularly being hit by cars outside the jail back in 1994.
Roth, the longest serving sheriff in Monroe County, was soon deluged with requests to take in other animals, including a blind horse from the Miami SPCA that was called Angel.
The facility has since grown to include traditional farm animals like miniature horses, Angus the steer, chickens, pigs, goats and rabbits as well as exotic animals like Mo the Sloth, a kinkajou, Kelsey the Lemur, alpacas (Snowflake, Arabella, Lilo and Stitch), an albino python, peacocks and many tropical birds, according to the facility’s Facebook page. Many have come from abusive or neglectful homes, or have been donated by people who simply cannot care for them.
“In order to save taxpayer money over the years with this, we’ll take trustees out of the jail who’ve earned that trustee status and allow them to work with the animals,” Linhardt said. “These are people who have no violent criminal history. … These are inmates who have an exemplary disciplinary record in the jail.”
Inmate trustees help clean enclosures and assist the paid curator, farmer Jeanne Selander, in maintaining the facility. The farm is in a parking garage under the jail. The jail is raised up on stilts to protect it from flooding.
Linhardt said the jail became a sort of Noah’s Ark during Hurricane Irma in 2017 when the inmates were taken to Palm Beach County ahead of the storm.
He believes the children’s farm is the only one of its kind in the continental United States on the grounds of a jail.
“Inmates will come back after they’ve served their sentence and continue to volunteer,” he said. “It is a therapeutic rehabilitation exercise for many of these guys.”
The animal farm is on the grounds of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Stock Island Detention Center at 5501 College Road in Key West.
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