An $80,000 Customized Road Gator With Plenty Of Recycled Bite!

Is it respectful, practical or merely just plain creepy to recycle the carcass of a once-living creature that has met its untimely demise? Wildlife conservationists frequently use the taxidermied bodies of ill-fated animals that have fallen victim to poachers or traffic accidents in an effort to educate the public about how to better respect and co-exist with them. Fashion designers like Reid Peppard transform city dwelling vermin into quirky eye-catching accessories in the hope that the public will appreciate their repurposed appeal and reconsider their value in our eco-system. Artist Mike Libby converts found creature carcasses into robo-steampunk artifacts via his Insect Lab project....and now Jim Jablon can be added to the ranks of critter recyclers who make the most of that which no longer has a heartbeat.

Aside from being certifiably bad-ass to look at, some may find Jablon's entirely customized 120 mile per hour croc-chopper a little off-putting. After all, it's made from the body of a culled gator, from its permanently fixed handlebar head (complete with implanted skull instrumentation) all the way down to its detachable scaled leather contours and aerodynamic tail. The very act of culling - in which animal populations are reduced through selective killing - is regularly conducted by wildlife officials when groups thrive beyond what the land can purportedly support and/or when they lack enough natural predators to control their numbers naturally. As long as man continues to dominate the landscape, it will continue to happen on a regular basis in cities and rural areas across the globe. But is it right to literally ram a motorcycle frame up an alligator's back end?

Jablon, the owner of Wildlife Rehabilitation of Hernando, knew that his wild ride - not surprisingly dubbed the GatorBike -- would turn a lot of heads, but he didn't set out to upset animal rights activists. Rather, his intention is to infuse money into his 12 year old rehabilitation center - which works to rescue mistreated, neglected and abandoned exotic pets -- by raffling off his eye-catching animalistic creation at $100 a pop via his website. What do you think? Is his flashy exercise in transportational taxidermy justifiable?