LOL! You made me think of this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJYxt...eature=related
13.5 footer and her baby gator crawled out of D'Arbonne Lake a couple of weeks ago, into the backyard of private residence on Corney Creek Drive, west of Farmerville. LDWF officials killed the mamma and her baby. I'm not sure why they were killed, but I understand they'd become a nuisance in the neighborhood. i wish they'd just tranquilized them and taken them further up the Corney and turned 'em loose.
There's no shortage of alligators these days. I really with they'd open-up the season a little more. I'm tired of "donating" $5 every year to enter the lottery hunt.
“Towie Barclay of the Glen, Happy to the maids, But never to the men.”
Good grief. Why would alligators being in a lake make you unable to or not want to ski there? There are THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of gators in the Ross Barnett Reservoir and Pearl River in the Jackson area, and it is the biggest recreational lake in the state. Especially up on the river, where most people ski, boat, fish, and camp if you shine a light along the bank at night you will see hundreds of little glowing eyes looking back at you. Its pretty neat. Yet, there has never been one instance of a gator attacking a human. Not one. They are just part of the scenery.
13.5 footer is an old gator. How big was her baby? I've never experienced a momma gator with only 1 baby that she protected once it was big enough to be on its own. I assume that it was big enough to be own its own because most LDWF agents I've known will release a baby gator. As far as not relocating it, the only reason I could think would have to be for territorial purposes and that they couldn't find a place far enough away that would prevent it from returning. Could also have to do with the fact that the LDWF agents weren't versed in capturing a gator, so it was easier to kill it. Or maybe they just wanted some gator meat and to try to sell the hide. If the smaller gator was a larger gator, I wonder if maybe the 13.5 footer might not have been a male and the other a female getting ready to mate.
I remember as a child of about 6 or 7 years going fishing on Live Oak Plantation just outside of Abbeville. It was my uncle, dad, older brother and myself in two bateaus about 12 ft. and the gators would swim right up alongside the boat. It really freaked me out. When I was older my uncle and I would go crabbing in the marshes by the locks leading out to the Gulf. I lost count of the number of alligator holes I would fall in. I had to chuckle when watching Swamp People the other night when one of them said that the gators stay away from the saltwater. I wanted to tell him, go take a ride in Rockeffeler Refuge and take the canals to the gulf. You'll find out otherwise.