Florida peeps

[Audreyvgs]

Originally posted by priceyfatprude
So I am watching the National Geographic channel, and it's allll about alligators. So natually I have some questions.

Is it seriously illegal to feed alligators?

Why do they have to destroy fed alligators? They didn't do anything wrong. I mean, it's not like they're SNAKES.

Have you ever tasted alligator meat? How was it prepared, and what di it taste like? First person to say chicken gets a beating. I mean, how can a reptile taste like a bird?

Have you ever seen an alligator, close up?

Please share your alligator stories with us.

I don't know how illegal it is to feed em, but it is seriously stupid. They come up out of the water to the next unsuspecting jerk who DOESNT have food in his hand, and then they get mad. They have a memory like an elephant for who's goanna feed em, and they beg, and FooFoo the poodle is usually what they go for next. They also take Black Labs, and ones of that size. They take people, too. Food's food. Once they've been fed, that's it. They're candidates for purses.

Alligators also have a territory. They take em out in the middle of the everglades, dump em, and within a year they're back. That's why they destroy em, and besides, there's just a few licensed trappers, and they're allowed to sell the meat and the skin, which goes for a real hefty price, so that tourists can eat gator nuggets. (tastes like shark!!)

They french fry it, It's kinda dry and tough, like what they do with shark. It's probably $12 a lb from the trapper...so thats why they do chunks. I've never had it cooked to where it was desirable to order it again.

I've been drivin along a road, with a 12 footer restin his head on the road. His head musta been like a foot and a half across. This jerk that's visitin pinged rocks off his head, and we were like 8 feet away from him, but when the big ones aren't hungry or protecting their young, they just want to be left alone. Mating season comes, and they croak like frogs. We go fishing sometimes and can shine a flashlight down the canals and see all kinds of glowy orange eyes. There's some formula for figuring how long they are by the distance between their eyes, but i forgot.

I feel bad for the gators, encroached upon as they are, but they're havin a really big expansion themselves, there's even crocodiles here now. They're meaner and have less of a sense of humor.

My sis and I were drivin along a country highway in the middle of the night comin home from Atlanta, bout 40 miles north of here, and it was really dark, and when you're goin 80, braking is not an option if you have a 12 footer on the road like we did. I told her to not hit the brakes, and the gator made it just to the line, but its whole body was in our lane. the whole lane. She swerved just a little and caught it behind the back legs. A semi ws comin the other way in about 30 seconds, so needless to say, we thought about it, but didn't go back to check. It happened so fast, we didn't see it comin. I bought her a bobble head alligator for her dashboard, and i put a bandaid on its ass.
It was like hitting a tree. We're still horrified! Thats my gator stories. till i think of more.

[sparticle]

//I bought her a bobble head alligator for her dashboard, and i put a bandaid on its ass.///

hahahahahaha! Woman, you rock!

[Audreyvgs]

I ran outside to take a pic of it, and her doors were locked, but this works!

[sparticle]

OMG! ROFL!!!!!! That's so funny -- it gave me a major case of the giggles.

[daverbee]

I posted a story a while back about the gator we encountered in the Okefenokee who had taken over the canoe landing at Billy's Island.
A Park Ranger told me later that he had been chasing people off the dock, not letting them land, and generally making a nuisance of himself. They were going out that night to move him deeper into the swamp but that he had been back once already and if he came back again he'd be steaks and shoe leather.
Most of the gators I see are pretty timid. When you're in a 17 foot canoe, they figure you're a really, really big, red alligator and that it'd be better for them if they leave you alone.
Vickie and I visited the swamp last month and there were close to a dozen or so nine footers hanging around one of the canals. Came to find out they had a turtle hatch the night before and there had been hundreds of baby turtles going into the waters. Gators got most of 'em.
When they are in mating season, like Audrey said, they make a croaking noise like a frog. However, when the bull gators are displaying, they make this deep, guttural roar that makes the water around them explode into waves! It's not like any sound you've ever heard before. They've probably been roaring like that since prehistoric times.
Interestingly enough, they don't need that much food to survive! A full grown gator can get by on three pounds of meat a year. However, being pragmatists like all other wild animals, if a meal presents itself, they'll go for it. Thus the problems with tourists and other idiots feeding them.
The Park Ranger I mentioned before told me a story of one night when another Ranger had a group of Boy Scouts out in a pontoon boat for a night cruise on Billy's Lake. One of the pontoons punctured and took on water so he got down in the water to hold the boat up after calling for help. The guy told me when they rounded the bend to get to the boat with the Scouts that they found the boat with their guy in the water surrounded by about 50 alligators! It was too dark for him to see them, and they decided not to tell him about it...
I've never eaten alligator meat so I don't know what it tastes like.
I've also read that the American Crocodile isn't as agressive as it's cousins in the rest of the world. Not that I'm going down to the Everglades to find out!

[Audreyvgs]

That reminds me, when you hear that bull alligator sound, it's like it puts your brain in some kind of primordial ooze...The hair on your body automatically stands straight up, like when there was this bobcat in heat, out in the wayback, we could hear it, screaming like nothing I ever heard. We went out there in a clump to see who was getting killed, and it went the 330' of our property in about 5 seconds, thru thick brush, we never did see it, but the screams!!!! We knew when it had passed that it had to be a bobcat, nothing could go that fast thru trees, and scream like a banshee at the same time! It was amazing to me, how your body reacts to perceived threat in such a primitive manner.

[sparticle]

//We knew when it had passed that it had to be a bobcat, nothing could go that fast thru trees, and scream like a banshee at the same time!//

Oh, yeah? If the Indians ever win a Series in my lifetime, we'll see about that!