Posted on 05/27/2021 6:35:49 AM PDT by Red Badger
12.9-foot gator ......................
Just name it “Tebow” and have him on the sidelines for UF games. That sounds like fun, especially when PETA comes to protest.
LOL! Headed into work one morning and a big one decided to plop down in the road at the guard shack and refused to move. Honking and throwing water bottles at it had no effect. Eventually one of the guard put a round in the soft spot on his head after about 20 minutes. The guard did get in trouble for it too. But we got to work on time.
Never let your dog in any fresh water in Florida.
In LA, a state trapper can shoot them if they’re over 8 ft. You can’t ask a solo man to wrangle a live gator larger than that. What’s the point?
Alligator alley can be interesting at times. We had a pond a block from our house and during mating season hearing the bull gators making their mating sounds would raise your neck hairs a tad.
13 footer?
That’s almost a big one...
Maybe they can relocate it to Chicago for the summer to replace the prior one.
And, in this state, there are gators as far north as Huntsville! Good grief! I truly believe there are some creatures put on this earth by God just to see if man is smart enough to hunt them to extinction. Gators and crocs are some, and mosquitos. There is no use for mosquitos.
We saw a ton of gators last week in a Louisiana bayou. They ate marshmallows.
L
Shoot! I got chased for a few feet by a six footer in Louisiana 2 freaking days ago. Pretty sure he was wanting to intentionally bite me
They get around. You can find them as far north as Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Momma says they got all them teeth and no tooth brush.
Texas gatorfest is back.
September 10-12
Anahuac, Texas.
I saw one at the Black Hammock that was near 20 foot long that those crazy good ole boys caught the night before. I used to live on a small lake and once in a while a 6 footer would visit from a swampy area across the road. Amazing it made it across a four lane divided highway so many times. It would come visit in Spring right after the Mallard duck had it’s babies. You’d see 6 ducklings following mama one day and the next day it would be 5, day after that 4 etc. They finally caught it heading back over to it’s swamp one time and that was that. Took several years though.
My neighbor there took me to Lake Jessup to learn how to sail in some tiny sailboat. Once we were out in the middle and I had taken over, he informed me about Lake Jessup being the most highly gator infested lake in the state. No pressure though. LOL
Pollard,
Your post brings back memories. In 1992-1993 I was a dump truck owner/operator working on the Eastern Beltway from the south end of the Lake Jessup bridge to Red Bug Road. At the end of the day we would park our big trucks at the blast freezer that was near the highway on Black Hammock Road.
Interesting that the bridge was completed months before we started the road construction. It was a mess! All the muck and mud had to be dug out and replaced with clean fill dirt for the road bed. It was impossible for a loaded dump truck to turn around, near the bridge, because of the soft soil so we had to turn around near the overpass and back down about a quarter mile to the dump location.
WE were driving across the bridge long before the road was completed. I noted then that I never wanted to get out on that lake because of all the gators I saw while driving across the bridge.
About that same timeframe, a young girl became lost in the swamp between the Ovido road and the lake. Everyone thought she would be taken by the gators but she was found a couple of days later relatively unharmed. Don’t know how she managed that.
Just some thoughts about gators and Lake Jessup. If you love your Dogs, don’t let them get near any lake, pond, stream or drainage/retention pond, even in a subdivision, because there will probably be a gator in there that will take your dearly loved K-9 companion.
A few years ago a young female student at U.F. took her beautiful Irish Setter to play at a soccer field. the field bordered on a swampy area and when the dog got near that area a gator took the dog, right there in view of the girl. Needless to say she was devastated.
Topsail,
The lake was pretty high when we went out so we couldn’t really tell if the mast was going to clear the bridge or not so we didn’t take the chance. My neighbor wanted to show me an island on the other half of the lake.
I live in MO now so my sailing days are over but after learning on that little foam filled plastic sailboat, I caught the bug and got a 22 foot Rhodes cabin cruiser. I’d stay out all weekend on Lake Harris out by Tavares. Wife and kids would go out with me Saturday, then she’d take the truck and they’d go home for the night and pick me up Sunday morning. I’d sail until midnight Sat, set anchor and crash, wake up at dawn and sail some more.
They got Crocs at Turkey point power house. They’ve been migrating for years. They’ve been found in the Everglades national park, out in Marco island, and as far north as the Burger King headquarters off old Cutler road.
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