Do Not Feed the Alligators.

A little late for that. This joker sees a person he hears a dinner bell and makes a bee line. That's the problem with feedin' 'em.

When I was a kid we spent a lot of weekends at St. Marks Wildlife Refuge in Florida.



We would use these tiny little brine shrimp as bait for fishing. Scoop 'em up with hand nets from the pool where that picture was taken. It didn't take long for the gators to appear. You'd dip your net in the water and a head would pop up as you pulled it out...Some bigger and more disturbing than others.

I wonder how much of this The Sister remembers. I know she remembers the time that a bull gator growled at us. I bet she remembers me riding all the way back to Tallahassee with a three inch splinter in my big toe picked up during our frantic run across a wooden bridge to get as far away from that sound as possible.

What? Yeah. We were barefoot...of course we were.

Anyway, like I said I never could catch any fish at that place...so, I crabbed. Tie a chicken neck to the end of a string, throw in the water, give it a minute, pull it out...crabs. The problem is gators like chicken necks too. It doesn't take 'em long to associate people with food...humans cause hunger pangs. That's when an otherwise disinterested creature becomes an eater of dogs and small children...so don't feed the gators! Last time we were there, crabbing had been banned.

Don't worry about feeding the snakes...



They seem to be managing.

Satan's hand-puppet there is no bigger round than your index finger. He's devouring a frog...at an excruciating pace. The frog was starting to balloon. We looked for something long enough to catch and fling the snake over to the gator...to snuff out that little devil and put the poor frog out of his misery but we couldn't. Beastly.

Nature's a &*^&^%%%(**&^^! You won't find any more passionate conservationists than you will in The South...hunting and fishing are so deeply engrained in the culture...but, you won't find a lot of support for abstract, misty eyed concerns about the "environment."

When your towns aren't being erased by hurricanes...you're dodging tornadoes, gators, and snakes. The Sister knows two little boys that have been bitten by Cotton Mouths, one in the backyard, the other in his own garage, this year...terrible. Sometimes around here it seems like a fight...and not a fair one (ask the folks in Tuscaloosa).

Don't wanna be overly dramatic about it...we aren't struggling to survive...at least not most of the time :).



Most of the time it's just a beautiful place.