What the heck is going on?

So Kerry and i are taking a road trip and for reasons I cannot fathom we end up in the cellphone lot at Orlando International Airport to collect her son to take him to his sister's back in Daytona.

Then i saw this guy dart under a car.

Can't quite see him, let me help


An Alligator...about 4.5ft long!
Remember the sidewalk in front of him!

We pull around the lot to get another view and we see that Mr Alligator has layed up on the gravel camouflaging himself.


Then we see a 20 year old boy walking down the sidewalk obviously burning time while he waits for his party to land. He is headed directly towards the hidden alligator so of course Kerry says she's going to warn him....intrusive thoughts caused me to suggest she not do so till he was even with the trash can...about 15 ft from it. LOL Kerry hollered out the window "hey dude, there's an alligator right there".
The kid nearly died when he saw it. Probably a good thing she didn't wait till he was closer!

I'm a little curious though....arent these the same alligators that were endangered in 1964 when i was in 2nd grade?? There seems to be plenty of them today. They are even traveling internationally it would seem!

The story actually gets better! After i took a pic of it under the SUV Kerry felt brave enough to approach it to take a pic.There turned out to be a terrified woman in the car who rolled down the window scaring the crap out of Kerry. She asked "What's under my car!" Kerry says..."you are never going to believe this....." I was howling with laughter!

Really Florida? THIS is where you're at?

Gators made huge comeback thanks to some initiatives. Apparently they can be found in shallow puddles.

They are far more common and far less dangerous than people seem to think.
Especially out of the water and that small.
They'll chase your toy poodle, but not you.
Gator attacks even in water are rare. Deaths caused by attacks are almost not heard of. Single digits. Usually it's some drunk doing something dumb. You will never have an issue if you just leave them alone.
I see so many in a weeks time, that I no longer notice them at all. Kind of like the green iguana saturation. Just part of the scenery.
The real danger is Canadian tourists.
(If you ride a motorcycle)

If the water is wet it has gators! Appartently it applies to parking lots!

DoubleD1996! said:

Gators made huge comeback thanks to some initiatives. Apparently they can be found in shallow puddles.

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I think the litmus test for whether or not an animal is "endangered" is if they are found as roadkill on Rd 95, they should no longer be considered endangered.

Z, I gathered that they aren't really a problem for you guys that are used to seeing them when Ray told me that they enjoy a good chin tickle!

High penalty though...i had a medium sized caiman and it was quite capable of changing how you peel an orange.

I am persuaded to BD's suggestion...if it's wet...prob gators! LOL

I would love to see wild gators running around! That's awesome.

Don't know about Florida, but they were nearly extinct in Louisiana. All the bans on hunting and all the legal protection did nothing. Know what saved them, brought them back and now has their numbers higher than has ever been counted? Commerce. Someone in the government figured out that bans don't work and people are going to do what they are going to do. They made it legal to go collect all the eggs from all the wild nests and head start all the babies in captivity. The "rancher" got to keep a percentage for meat and leather (commerce) and the .gov collected up a percentage and released them back into the wild at 4 feet long, when the only predator that would be a threat to them would be another larger gator, or people. Within just a few years they reduced it from 17% re-released to 12%. The program was working so incredibly well, that they reduced it even further after a few more years, and today they have more than they know what to do with. The are more now than whenever they began counting.

Wouldn't it be nice if they adopted that strategy for desert tortoises?

Yvonne G said:

Wouldn't it be nice if they adopted that strategy for desert tortoises?

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Yes. Yes it would. And for every other species too. I find that most of the regulations regarding non-native "endangered species" hamper the efforts to help the species in question. Radiata or Galapagos tortoises being prime examples. Peregrin falcons being another.

Its almost like their intent really isn't to help species...