The Gator

Yeah, gators love dogs... in a dinner kind of way. Your little dogs would only be an appetizer. Gators are like pumas. They are very smart and will study the habits of their prey to attack at the weakest point in the prey's routine. For instance, they've been known to hide under a vehicle to catch a dog or cat, as it is let our to pee or poo.

Six foot is actually a medium size juveline gator. I had a 14 foot one within about 15 feet of me at one point in March of this year and saw several 10 and 12 footers. They grow about a foot a year. The 14 footer had grabbed a big horse by the hoof a couple of years ago, when the gator was 12 feet long.
The horse still has bite marks in his hoof and the gator took 2 hooves to the body enabling an escape. .
Luckily, the horse was able to break free from being dragged into a lake, where horse drowning death was certainly going to be the outcome. That horse still drinks from that lake. But, I bet he is a lot more wary.
I got a lot of photos of that gator and the horse too.

At one point the horse literally tried to warn me about the gator. He saw the gator coming nearer to me from a distance and whinneyed facing and looking at me. I turned to the horse and said, "Yeah, I know, I know he's there. Don't worry." He shook his head, as if to say, "don't say I didn't warn you."

I often went to that lake in the evening before sunset as a lot of birds perched in a tree
in the lake, I've heard that the gator will occasionally grab a bird from bottom branches.
The gator would watch me take photos of the birds flying in to perch in that tree and over the weeks he would ease closer and closer to me, when he realized, I was not there to shoot or hurt him. I always kept 12 feet of land between me and him, as they can jump 12 feet out of the water and can run faster than a horse for the first 100 yards.
They don't often do that, but they can.

One evening he was about 3 feet from the edge of the lake in front of me.
I had taken a lot of photos of him and felt he was too close.
So, I said "you have a good night gator, I'm off to get some dinner" and walked backwards before turning and heading home.
As usual, there was no one else around, and I didn't want to be his dinner 'guest'.

It took a while for them to get comfortable withe me and my camera. I became somewhat friendly with several of them in various locations. In the beginning of my trip they would submerge the second they saw me. I got to learn where their usual hangouts were and I would visit each sunny day. By the time I left to go back to NJ, they weren't panicked at all by my presence and allowed me to take a lot of photos of them.
There was one 10 foot gator who had a baby gator in a river. I didn't know, until I saw the pictures I took on the computer back home. She instantly submerged initially when we met.
A month later I could talk gently to her "Hey Momma, how are you today ?" and she would stay on the surface near the edge of the river. I got lots of photos of her, as she was usually in the same area each time.

Of all the gators I met, the only one that would move closer to me, was that 14 footer.
I'm guessing it was more out of curiosity, than hunger, as I would talk to him.
But, I wasn't taking too much of a chance. I sure wasn't going swimming in that lake,
nor getting close to the edge. I don't have hooves.

The bobcats will thin out the feral cat population. They are no match for a bobcat.

Yes, the standard advice if one runs from a gator is to zigzag, because gators can't turn
quickly and maintain their speed. I keep it in mind. However, it's not something I want to
be in a position to test. Plus, once in GA I was on a narrow path with gator infested water on both sides. There was no space to zigzag. Thankfully, no gator chased me. Instead a coiled water moccasin with his mouth wide open awaited me to step on his fangs.in the middle of that path. While constantly scanning both sides of the path for gators,
somehow I saw that viper one step before making impact. So, I took a lot of photos of him until he finally moved off the path into the water. There was no room to walk around him.
It was the only time I walked that path and am not anxious to go back.

Feeding gators is a very dumb thing to do. It is illegal. Plus, gators naturally have a intrinsic fear of humans. However, when they begin to associate food with humans,
they loose that fear, and the next humans they encounter, who don't feed them, are more likely to get attacked.

Yikes!

I've driven along Alligator Alley when visiting my BFF in Florida and what really got to me is how much road there is. Miles and miles and bloody miles. And how we kept spotting gators. What do you do if your car breaks down, sit in the car and fry while waiting for help? Get out and be chomped? No way we could have walked several miles without having at least one far too interesting experience

We were driving on that road a couple hours and saw only one other car in that whole time. Must have seen 80 gators sunning themselves and waiting ... waiting ...