Free Republic

Florida residents may be no stranger to the odd alligator sighting, but as mating season ramps up, the hungry and horny reptiles are turning up in the strangest of places. Videos and photos from across the state have shown gators being found in swimming pools, on the streets and even in a chicken wing joint's parking lot. On Friday, Fort Myers police shared a picture of an eight feet alligator that startled a local family when they discovered that it had torn through their back porch screen at 2am.

Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency has confirmed the multiple alligator sightings in Tennessee are true. According to the TWRA, alligators are naturally expanding into Tennessee from southern border states. News Channel 5 in Nashville is reporting authorities with the TWRA said they have not stocked any alligators in the state, and they added the alligators are simply expanding. They said we must learn to coexist with them like many others in the southern states.

A man was bitten by an alligator while playing disc golf at a Florida park Monday, authorities said. Richard Peel, 35, was playing disc golf at Cliff Stephens Park in Clearwater when the incident occurred. He was bitten after trying to retrieve his disc from a pond, Clearwater Fire Rescue officials said. Witnesses locked arms to pull Peel to safety, Derrick Moody, who lives near the park, told FOX 13 Tampa Bay. “I guess they ran over and formed a ladder with each other and they were able to pull him out,” Moody told the station. Peel was taken to...

Air flows mostly in a one-way loop through the lungs of monitor lizards -- a breathing method shared by birds, alligators and presumably dinosaurs, according to a new University of Utah study. The findings -- published online Dec. 11 in the journal Nature -- raise the possibility this breathing pattern originated 270 million years ago, about 20 million years earlier than previously believed and 100 million years before the first birds. Why remains a mystery. "It appears to be much more common and ancient than anyone thought," says C.G. Farmer, the study's senior author and an associate professor of biology...

How about the blonde wading in the swamp? She stealthily sneaks up on an alligator and dives on him and wrestles him to shore and throws him upside down and pins him down. She looks down, and says "Damn! This one doesn't have any shoes either!"

Zimmerman, 34, allegedly stalked investigator Dennis Warren in December 2017... Warren was hired by a production company to help find people who could be interested in participating in a documentary about [Trayvon] Martin.... An investigation by the county sheriff's office earlier this year found that Warren reached out to Zimmerman in September and gave him his contact information. Zimmerman became upset that his family was contacted to possibly participate in the documentary, the documents state. He then allegedly sent the private investigator threatening texts and emails... "Anyone who [expletive] with my parents will be fed to an alligator,"

A North Carolina swamp park has posted a video explaining how alligators survive in a frozen pond, and it’s both creepy and bizarre... ...The alligators seem to instinctively know when the water is about to freeze, says Howard, who is general manager of the park. They respond by sticking their nose above the surface at just the right moment, allowing the water to freeze around them.... Alligators then enter “a state of brumation, like hibernating.” Alligators can regulate their body temperature in all sorts of weather, park officials said, and can essentially remain frozen in place until the ice melts.

Footage above a plane crash in the Everglades led to a disturbing discovery on Thursday. The Federal Aviation Administration told WPLG that a Cessna 152 crashed in the Everglades about 7 miles west of Homestead with only the pilot on board.

South Carolina's Fripp Island Golf & Beach Resort had a surprise visitor to its golf course this week: A 12-foot-long American alligator. Jessica Miller, the head naturalist at the Fripp Island property, posted a video of the menacing reptile on Facebook Tuesday, explaining that he "traveled down the 4th fairway of Ocean Point Golf Links at Fripp Island this evening!" Even though the gator had a "small crowd of humans" watching him, he was unphased. "He paid us no mind and had only his next pond in his sights," Miller writes.

A seven-foot alligator startled residents of a Louisiana town on Monday when it emerged from a storm drain behind an elementary school. Authorities said the alligator crawled from the drain following heavy rains in Jefferson Parish. The drain was located behind Marie B Riviere Elementary School, which wasn't holding class because of spring break, according to WWL.

Even the animal kingdom has been a bit testy lately. The moment a seemingly unprovoked horse attacked an alligator near Gainesville, Florida was captured in footage originally shared by Krystal Berry on Wednesday and posted to Storyful. The video, which included a small crowd of horrified onlookers, quickly caught social media's attention.

After months of negotiation with state officials, a Florida woman has finally received a license allowing her to keep her pet alligator. The gentle gator named Rambo is "like a dog" and loves being petted and going for walks on a leash, according to his owner, Mary Thorn, 55, of Lakeland, Florida. Rambo is ... a local celebrity and has been the star of small shows... for a few charities and organizations... The "trained" gator has even been photographed "riding an ATV" along with her on her motorcycle, Thorn said. But earlier this year, in March, the gator garnered national...

The admonitions were in emails from employees at Reedy Creek Emergency Services. Reedy Creek is the Disney-controlled taxing district that provides government services to the theme parks and surrounding areas. The emails were obtained through a public-records request made after an alligator snatched 2-year-old Lane Graves from the shore of the Seven Seas Lagoon on June 14 and drowned him while he was on vacation with family from Nebraska. The attack took place at Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. After that, many tourists came forward with their own stories of alligator sightings at Disney. One employee at the resort said...

Walt Disney World is making some changes in the wake of an alligator attack that killed a 2-year old boy at one of the company's resorts, reports CBS Miami. According to the Sun-Sentinel, "No fishing" signs have been added to areas including Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa, the Fort Wilderness campground and Old Key West Resort. Beaches are now staffed by employees and are closed at night except during fireworks shows.

Lane Graves was not the first youngster to be attacked by an alligator at Disney World. In 1986, 8-year-old Paul Santamaria was bit on the leg by a 7-foot-4 inch long female, which had been lurking in the shallows of a pond that was also located at one of the park’s famous resorts — and his parents later sued, charging the “Happiest Place on Earth” with negligence. In the suit, they claimed that Disney had failed to warn visitors about the gator,

Florida has a gator problem. The animals live and walk among us, close to us. They live in our lakes and reservoirs and swamps, and we set up our businesses and parks around them, as if nothing will ever happen.

Davie Police Capt. Dale Engle says the body found Sunday in Southwest Ranches, about 20 miles west of Fort Lauderdale, appears to have been at the location for a long time. Engle says officers were able to scare the alligators away from the body but the two lingered as officers tried to recover the body.

Golfers in Palmetto, Florida, could be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled off the course and into Jurassic Park at the weekend. While playing a typical Sunday game at Buffalo Creek Golf Course, Charles Helms was able to get a video of a monster alligator casually strolling across the course. The dinosaur-like gator looked even bigger when another man came into the frame to take a picture - but apparently he is quite a regular sight in the area.

An alligator was recently caught scratching at the front door of a South Carolina family's home as if it were attempting to ring the doorbell. The unusual sight was recorded on video Monday morning in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, according to ABC affiliate WCIV. A man named Gary Rogers had been walking his dog when he suddenly saw the gator casually wandering around the residential neighborhood, the station reported.

A Florida woman was fighting Wednesday to keep her 6-foot-long clothes-wearing, motorcycle-riding pet alligator in her home. The 125-pound reptile named Rambo even has a bedroom in Mary Thorn's home in Lakeland. Thorn has had a license for the alligator for 11 years, but the gator recently grew to 6 feet. Wildlife officials say an alligator that size must have 2.5 acres of land. Thorn told the Orlando Sentinel that even if she had land available, Rambo can't be left outdoors because of sensitivity to sunlight. “Everyone will tell you that I treat that animal like a baby,” she said....