The gator from ‘Happy Gilmore’ is now a taxidermy exhibit in Colorado

If you ever watched Happy Gilmore and wondered what happened to the alligator that bit off Chubbs Peterson’s hand, the answer is: he retired to a gator farm in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, died of old age last year, and now just got taxidermied and is now staring down visitors at the Colorado Gator Farm near Alamosa.

Morris the Alligator — the actual reptile who appeared in the 1996 Adam Sandler film alongside dozens of other TV shows and movies over a three-decade Hollywood career — is back on display at the Colorado Gator Farm in Mosca after being preserved through taxidermy following his death last year. Based on his growth rate and tooth loss, Morris was at least 80 years old when he died. He was nearly 11 feet long and weighed 640 pounds. When the farm announced his death, it said it planned to have him taxidermied “so that he can continue to scare children for years to come. It’s what he would have wanted.”

The Colorado Gator Farm, which opened to the public in 1990, started as a tilapia farm before evolving into an exotic animal refuge that now houses hundreds of rescued reptiles for educational purposes. It’s one of the more wonderfully bizarre roadside attractions in a state that has no shortage of them — a gator farm at 7,500 feet of elevation in the high desert, about three and a half hours southwest of Denver.

Morris is now on display for educational purposes, which is a polite way of saying you can go visit a stuffed Hollywood alligator in the middle of rural Colorado. If that’s not a road trip worth taking, nothing is. The farm is open daily. Bring the kids. Morris would have wanted it that way.