July 20, 2008

alligators

Originally PUBLISHED May 21, 2005

The guy who wrote this asked me not to link to his blog (it's "not ready yet" in his opinion), so I won't, but I liked what he had to say. I've SEEN alligators take dogs and racoons when the gator was in a hungry mode and it's an amazing thing to watch.

Ever seen an aligator hunt something? Its pretty damn impressive. I remember when I was younger watching a friend with his dog on a lakeshore taunting a gator. His dog would bark like crazy at the gator. That scaily bastard would go under and pop up so close to the dog that it would scare the ass out of the lab. As soon as that lab saw it pop up within a few feet, it'd tuck tail and run. For me it was scairy, for my friend it was fun, and I think the dog enjoyed it too. I knew very well that gator could take the lab whenever it wanted to, and it was us that kept it from getting too close. The gator eventually got that dog. It was while we were in school. My friend came home to find his dog missing, and later found its corpse left under a pine tree in the lake. Him and his father hunted that gator for a while and eventually got it. This was back when that kind of thing was legal.

Alligators LOVE dogs, racoons, possums and small children when they can catch them. Most of the time, their prey isn't in the water. A clever alligator will cruise up slowly to something on the bank until he gets within striking distance. Then, he will execute an amazingly fast 360-degree turn, hit whatever he was after with his tail and knock it into the water.

If he makes a successful strike, the gator will grab its prey in its powerful jaws and do what I call the "alligator roll" with it. They just twist around and around in the water to stupify and drown what they just caught. Then, they'll go stick whatever it was under a log beneath the water to let it tenderize a while before they eat it.

Alligators generally won't mess with a full-grown human, even if you're in the water with them. They'll leave you alone unless you start fucking with a mama gator's babies. If you are foolish enough to do that, mama will declare jihad on you in a heartbeat, and she'll come after you with her mouth wide open. And gators are FAST when they want to be.

She's not looking at you as food--- she just trying to protect her young'uns, and she'll do it fiercely. I find that trait amazing in a creature that's probably the closest thing to a dinosaur that we still have roaming the planet today. The bastards are difficult to kill, too. If you shoot at one, you need plenty of gun and a good shot to kill a big one. The fuckers are armor-plated.

Alligators aren't as aggressive as crocodiles, but it's still not a good idea to allow your dog or a small child to wander along a creek bank where alligators live. Gators see a meal there. And they'll catch it if they can.

Don't EVER feed the bastards. I've seen dumbasses do that and I want to push them into the water every time. The LAST thing you want is an alligator associating human beings with food.

I agree with my friend Catfish, who has made a project out of ridding his creek of the gators that were there when he moved in. "If I see one, I kill it," he says. He's nailed a couple of dozen so far, including two BIG ones. He had a mama come after him the other day when he was shooting "babies" (about two feet long) and he nailed her with a couple of rounds of .00 buckshot from a .12 gauge, right into her open mouth from about three feet away. She sank under the water and never came up again.

I was hoping she would float, because from Cat's description, we could have AT LEAST made a couple of fine belts and maybe a pair of boots out of that one. Hell... she may have had enough hide for a wallet or two.

Just take some good Cracker advice here. Alligators are NOT your friends, and you don't want them around if you have dogs or small children. Gators have no predators to menace them, other than man or bigger gators. They breed proficiently and will eat anything in or around your creek if you allow them to thrive. Don't do that.

I say kill them. Kill them ALL!