His neighbours have cats and dogs, but when 72-year-old Philippe Gillet settles down to watch television there is usually an alligator dozing beside him.
His bungalow in western France is also home to a venomous Gabonese viper, a spitting cobra, a python, alligator turtles that can bite off a finger, tarantulas and scorpions.
When someone unfamiliar enters Gillet’s living room, Gator, a two-metre (6ft 6-inch) alligator, growls from under a coffee table.
“Calm down,” says Gillet, and Gator goes back to his snooze near Alli, another dozing alligator.
“When there is a storm he comes to sleep in my bed,” said Gillet. “People think I am mad.”
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