Some people foolishly give alligators food. Then the alligator loses its fear of humans and associates any person going by with “food.” It looks like this alligator became a community “pet” of sorts and it led to a tragedy.
“Some people give alligators food.”
It’s not just alligators, either. It’s pretty much any wild animal that wanders by looking for food, AND in my experience it is usually an elderly or retired person doing the feeding.
My parents retired to Arizona, purchased a nice big place on the Colorado River with a considerable amount of high end landscaping. In their boredom, they began to feed a couple of roadrunners that came by every morning and evening like clockwork for food. After about 6 months of this, my parents took a week long trip to Hawaii, only to return to the total destruction of the landscaping in the front and back yards.
According to their neighbors, appears the roadrunners have a meltdown after a few days of no free hamburger meat and proceeded to destroy / tear up every plant available. They then went after the neighbor’s yard when they were finished with my parents. One of the neighbors finally killed both birds with his shotgun.