Florida-alligators

April showers are falling here in the Puget Sound area. They really bring out the sweet cottonwood scent and brighten the greens of the newly emerged leaves. Tme for alligator ramblings.

juvenile alligator

baby alligators and turtle I haven't identified yet

I saw my first alligator the first day we were out. What a thrill to see a wild alligator! We saw young alligators and huge alligators.  We saw them everywhere we went. I saw many along the Tamiami Trail (highway 41) canal and pretty much anywhere there was enough water for them to hang out in. I didn't realize how beautiful their eyes are. There is a presence behind them.

Mostly what they do is lie in the sun, lie in the water, waiting and floating seamlessly through the water. They were never threatening but like a bison one shouldn't get to close. They can run 15mph and I can't, so caution was at the forefront of my mind.

yes that's a gator behind me. there was one to my left also.

Gatorland group waiting for wading bird chicks to fall out of nests

Reading up on these fascinating reptiles I find that they have one of the most powerful bites in the animal kingdom. These guys can stay submerged for 8 hours in very cold water; mostly it's around 10 to 20 minutes. There are now 1 million in Florida. They were protected in 1962 and alligator farms were created to provide hides and meat. I can't even imagine killing one of these noble creatures to make boots or eat for dinner.

Being carnivores they'll eat pretty much whatever they can get those powerful jaws on. Seeing their scales close up I see that many smaller ones have yellow stripes. I never realized they had color to their armor. I'm guessing the color is on young and juvenile ones.

This young one may live to be 35 to 60 years old if it's living in the Big Cypress National Preserve area. The largest alligator ever found in Florida was 17 feet 5 inches. Florida has crocodiles,too but they're found in saltwater. We looked for them near Flamingo in the Everglades National park but didn't see any. We saw lots of alligators because we were mainly wandering around freshwater. I never got tired of them. I kinda miss them. I keep expecting to see them in the ditches around here. Enjoy the Mary Oliver poem.

Alligator Poem

 I knelt down

at the edge of the water,

and if the white birds standing

in the tops of the trees whistled any warning

I didn’t understand,

I drank up to the very moment it came

crashing toward me,

its tail flailing

like a bundle of swords,

slashing the grass,

and the inside of its cradle-shaped mouth

gaping,

and rimmed with teeth—

and that’s how I almost died

of foolishness

in beautiful Florida.

But I didn’t.

I leaped aside, and fell,

and it streamed past me, crushing everything in its path

as it swept down to the water

and threw itself in,

and, in the end,

this isn’t a poem about foolishness

but about how I rose from the ground

and saw the world as if for the second time,

the way it really is.

The water, that circle of shattered glass,

healed itself with a slow whisper

and lay back

with the back-lit light of polished steel,

and the birds, in the endless waterfalls of the trees,

shook open the snowy pleats of their wings, and drifted away,

while, for a keepsake, and to steady myself,

I reached out,

I picked the wild flowers from the grass around me—

blue stars

and blood-red trumpets

on long green stems—

for hours in my trembling hands they glittered

like fire.

~ Mary Oliver