Florida tourist/roadside attractions--Parrot Jungle, Miami Florida

, as it was originally called, was opened by Austrian immigrant Franz Scherr in 1936. The Depression cut short his construction career and he wound up in Pinecrest, Florida, where he opened a feed store and kept several live parrots on display. The birds became a local attraction and Scherr realized that tourists would pay to see them. According to Grace DuMond, widow of Joseph DuMond, the founder of then-nearby Monkey Jungle, Scherr was a pest, always making suggestions to Joe. "'Why don't you do this and how about trying that?'" she recalled. "Finally, Joe just told him to go start his own jungle, and he did."

By the turn of the millennium, Pinecrest real estate prices had gone through the roof, so Parrot Jungle sold its property and moved to Watson Island in Biscayne Bay, just offshore from Miami.

It has a "liger" named Hercules and a "crocosaurus" named Hank, billed as "the largest crocodile under the care of humans in the United States, and possibly the world." The entire Miami Serpentarium, which closed in the mid-1980s, has been resurrected here.