What Makes me Sad?

             This does!  This makes me really sad(picture below).  Don't get me wrong, I'm not against hunting at all and I think FWC is doing fine at managing alligator populations in the state.  What makes me sad is our culture.  We think killing a huge alligator is something great and the hunters should be praised for killing such a massive beast that has been chasing our children around every time they dip their toes in Florida waterways.  This happened recently in the Econ River.  A river near to me and one that I am very very familiar with.  In fact, so familiar with that I may have even seen this same alligator.

                   Let me tell you how I felt when I saw this alligator in person (bottom picture).  It was purely amazing!  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  The sheer size was magnificent.  My first thought was to get a picture then to get closer.  My friend and I slid down the bank opposite of it to get a closer look.  When we did that the alligator responded in a way that you would never see any crocodilian behave on TV.  It slowly slid half way into the water.  It did this for one reason only.  The alligator simply felt exposed and vulnerable.  We stood there on the bank for several minutes, all three of us motionless.  This alligator was easily older than me and had likely lived in the area most of its life.  He was the dominant male and he was the top predator.  I felt like a foreigner in his kingdom. All the animals respected and feared this animal, even I did but unfortunately, not everyone sees it like I do. 

                If you look up this story you'll probably find that there was also an alligator attack in the same area a few months prior.  So great, we killed a man eater right?  NO!  Watch this video it's a pretty good account.  First of all it bit him in the head and did not kill him.  That was a bit comical to me.  Also, the alligator was estimated to be 10ish feet long.  People never under estimate when it comes to alligators (that's science. lol).  It's pretty safe to say that the culprit was not the alligators pictured below.  The bottom one doesn't look nearly as big as it did in person but it was certainly in the same class as the dead one.  So the bottom line is this kid, and many others, have been swimming in this river, likely for years with these alligators and this is the only recently recorded "attack?"  If it was an attack the kid would be dead.  This was surely a response to being frightened or disturbed when the kid floated and bumped into it (mentioned in the video).

               I think what we can learn from this about alligators is that they're not out to get people and even when we're swimming in their rivers and they're many times our own size.  I'm glad the kid was okay and able to hike out with a bleeding head but if we're going to swim in Florida waters it's very important that we keep our wits about us and know our own limits.

I apologize for the long post but please ask me any questions you might have.