Alligaors range from the Gulf Coast to Oklahoma

Alligators range from the Gulf coast up to Oklahoma (04)

           Larry J. LeBlanc © 2004

There has been a lot in the news lately about alligators showing up in places where people frequent. Just a couple weeks ago there was one in a lake as the uninformed wish to refer to any small body of water that should be classified as a pond or out in west Texas a tank. Whatever you wish to call the pool it was right in amongst a bunch of high dollar houses in the Houston area and the presence of the alligator upset the human inhabitance. Naturally the police and zoo people had to capture this rightful resident and move it to where it would not be a threat to the interlopers, homeowners.

A few weeks prior to that there was an alligator in a creek around which a housing addition had been built, further north near Conroe, that was handled as people do with any wild animals in the year 2004. The folks ended up being responsible for the alligator being destroyed.

You might ask why I made that last statement as I did charging the residents with the responsibility of the alligator being destroyed and not merely attacking the alligator as an entity that required destruction from the beginning. Well I’ll tell you why and plainly put most people in 2004 have no idea about how to react and respond to encounters with wild animals. Wild animals today are generally thought of as either cute and need to be coddled or they are ugly, freighting and need to be destroyed and both lines of thought are completely wrong.

Also let me assure you that even though alligators are more prolific around the coastal marshes they can be found as far north as Oklahoma and Arkansas. There are alligators in Lake Conroe, Sam Rayburn and I know there are mating alligators in Lake Fork just to mention a few fishing and water recreation hot spots. So if you are up around Dallas and think you see an alligator in a wet area you just might be correct.

Being alligators are part of Mother Nature and one of God’s natural creatures as we humans continue to invade their habitat evermore rapidly I would like to offer a little information about the alligator. Possibly I can inform those who do not know why their interaction with modern man is so dangerous and generally disastrous, especially for the alligator.

To begin with alligators are reptiles, cold-blooded animals. They do not think nor react like warm-blooded animals in the wild much less like the family dog, cat or people. They have a natural aversion to man. They will leave an area where man is if left to their own initiative. Unlike most warm blooded, wild animals they do not fear man. I do not believe fear is in the makeup of an alligator. They eat and they propagate and when it gets too cold to sustain their body functions they hibernate.

So fellow coddlers an alligator is not interested in being coddled, treated fairly nor or they in fear of a law suite from some human classified wrong involving their actions. They eat and they breed. The only use anything has to them will fall into one of those two categories. Otherwise the only other way that an alligator may view you is an enemy horning in on their domain and after their food or mate.

The aversion that an alligator has toward man is thin at best and if you start to mess with them you are courting disaster. If you see one the correct thing to do is to give it a wide berth and keep a sharp eye on it in case it should decide you are the enemy. I believe enemy and dinner can be synonymous to an alligator.

One big “never” involving alligators in the wild is never feed one. That will completely remove any shyness toward man and they will become aggressive. Alligators are not too picky about their food either. So let’s just say that you see and alligator in a creek or pond and you throw a morsel of food to it. After that it will become almost impossible to get rid of it. It will stay around looking for more food indefinitely.

So lets us say that you feed one and a few days later the family dog runs down to the creek for a drink or a swim. To an alligator that is dinner. It has no way to distinguish the right or wrong between eating a family pet or a dead rotten chicken. Now let’s say a young child goes to the creek. I think I can stop right here.

For the foolhardy that might decide to go and mess with an alligator sunning themselves on the bank or just hanging out in the water I offer a little about their defense systems. An alligator can run fast enough to catch the most practiced human sprinter in twenty or so yards. The tail of an alligator is all muscle and a six or seven-foot alligator can break the leg of an adult with one good swat from their tail. If one would happen to get close enough to come into contact with their legs and feet they have claws that can cut you to shreds like knives. Everyone knows they can bite, but they have the strongest, closing jaw muscles of any living creature.

So neighbors when it comes to alligators, snakes or any wild animal the best answer to safely and interestingly sharing our world comes from educating ourselves about them and then acting like the civilized people we are suppose to be.