Yes, there is. Sorry Blonde. I thought it was a rhetorical question. Please excuse me for not answering.
Quasi
Thanks, hon. I really didn’t know that fact – you have yourself a great Saturday night.
After reading that im surprised that the alligator hadn’t caused problems before this, I don’t know much about them but I do know that if an animal starts to lose fear of humans and keeps getting closer and closer to them it becomes dangerous. Also someone had already noticed this and filed a complaint about it. It says when they are a threat they can be removed, after that I would say that a few in that area are deffinatly a threat. Think about what this kids family and friends are going through right now and you people are getting made about the alligators that get killed? If that had been your son/cousin/neighbor/brother how would you feel?
Kid was a jerk, he did teach the others a lesson they won’t ever get in school but it’s taking practical experiments a bit far I feel.
Kid has saved us reading about his stupid demise in the future, like the Darwin awards.
You play the game, you lose all your chips sometimes, it happens.
Stuff him !
Let’s start to look at man made tragedies where the victims are blameless, just unfortunate, things like the killings in Congo, or Sierra Leone.
Female alligators become sexually mature at an average 6 feet. Citation, under the section entitled breeding. All adult alligators can potentially harm children. Children are strongly advised to avoid any areas where they may come into contact with them in their natural habitat, particularly in the vicinity of a restaurant and a fishing dock. There is no way to judge its appetite and any gator can attack people in the water. Pass the word please.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ManDuh003 *
After reading that im surprised that the alligator hadn’t caused problems before this, I don’t know much about them but I do know that if an animal starts to lose fear of humans and keeps getting closer and closer to them it becomes dangerous.
Probably because most people are smart enough to avoid it. Do you also know why they lose fear of humans?
To anyone reckless enough to swim near them, yes, I agree. So what?
sight No relevancy to the discussion. I don’t think anyone deserves preferential treatment. Traumatized families are not the most rational thinkers. I’d sooner gut the son of a bitch that murdered a son of mine that a wild dangerous predator. I’m sure you would understand it then.
If you notice the poll on the news site, 70% voted to reduce the gator population. Because a boy was killed? Idiots. But if there are too many gators for the eco system I will vote for it too.
Am I to assume that those who think the kid deserved his fate would have done nothing to save him, had they been on the spot and able to do so?
As to his parents not properly educating him re alligators, I have personally seen adult tourists deliberately attempt to provoke basking alligators into motion. I once saw an adult tourist pick up a basking baby alligator in spite of all warnings not to do so. People visit tourist trap alligator farms and see employees feeding gators, then assume that all gators can safely be fed. Possibly this kid’s parents didn’t know enough about alligators to know that they are dangerous. If anyone should think that this is an impossible bit of ignorance, they should should simply visit The Everglades National Park and discuss ignorance of wild life with any park ranger.
I am appalled that anyone would honestly believe the kid deserved his fate, that the world is better off without him, and that the alligators are deserving of sympathy.
Was any other person directly responsible for the kids death ?
He went in despite warnings from his friends, and against all common sense, I cannot imagine he has not seen some tv programme where someone or something is eaten by alligators.
Look at it another way, his friends might have been tempted to try rescue him and become victims themselves, all for his stupidity, how would youu feel as the parent of one of the other boys ?
Stuff him !
World can be tough on innocents and blameless ones, he took a stupid chance and paid for it.
No sleep lost.
There’s no need for that. The kid is dead, he payed the ultimate price, have a little respect.
I’m of the belief that it’s a tragedy that the child was killed, number one. But, number two, it’s also a tragedy to have to run around killing the state reptile after the first avoidable tragedy. It’s a twofer.
It’s not up there with the massacres in Rwanda or anything, to be clear. On a slow news day it’s worth discussing.
Hopefully, some kids will learn from this and respect big alligators in the water. Personally, I respect the little ones in the water also. Even a little ‘tiny’ five footer is not something I feel like tangling with on a daily basis. I could, but I’m not Steveo.
I believe “the power to exert that will against the will of others” would be more apt.
I will confess to not having read this entire thing, I only made it to the bottom of the first page, but this is exactly the kind of thread that makes me leave this place sometimes for weeks on end. The way some members of the SDMB will equivocate on issues just galls the hell out of me. There seems to be nothing that people here won’t try to defend against common sense.
Yes, the kid was stupid, yes he probably deserved what he got, NO, the fucking alligators are not more important than children! I’m not saying that every gator needs to die, and I don’t think anyone else is either, but the gators live because we allow them to. It is an artificial relationship, and when the gators step out of line, it is an indication that their numbers need to be reduced. It’s the same thing as killing rats; hell rats probably feel more pain than gators. I don’t see anyone complaining that our cities are overflowing with rats! Know why that is? Because we fucking kill every one of them we can find!
The alligators are more important than people crowd is probably composed of the same group of nutters that protest culling out the suburban deer populations. “Can’t we just spay and neuter the deer…” Yeah, you neuter them by putting an arrow through their hearts, or a bullet through their lungs. You’d spend $1,000s on keeping a sickly deer herd eating peoples tulips while kids don’t have textbooks in their schools. The romantic vision of pests that some people delude themselves into believing never ceases to amaze me.
In summary, kill the gators, kill the rats, kill the deer, kill the geese, and knock the dumb ass kids up-side the head so they don’t swim with gators. All of you gator apologists need to get you collective heads out of your asses and join the real fucking world.
What a tragedy. There seems to be an awful lot of posters who think that 12 year old boys can be left unsupervised and have the ability to always make rational judgements. All I can say was where were the parents or care givers?
Also, if allegator numbers have increased significantly due to human endevour, then culling is perfectly acceptable IMO.
What did the rats, deer and geese do? Jeez.
Anger management.
The hits keep coming. Man lassos gator.
I’m not sure if this deserves its own thread. What a goofball. A five foot alligator was going to attack a woman and her four children on land? Uh, OK. Zombies attacking seems as likely however.
Blonde, from the same issue, some background on Florida development. We keep encroaching, but alligators don’t seem to mind the artificial habitats we create. Deltona, mentioned in the article, has plenty of gators.
I guess in another 500 years or so, we won’t have to worry about this sort of thing, eh? By then, humanity will have destroyed everything - rain forests, everglades, you name it.
I’ve got a big backyard, bring on the gators (wait, let us put in a pool first…)
Good night, y’all.
That’s one of the 10%, I guess. 
I understand that some of you do not like children, and that is okay. However, some of the callused comments I have read in this thread are disgusting. The little boy did something stupid, but ya know what? Kids ARE stupid! They don’t think! It amazes me that so many of us make it to adulthood.
My little brother was stupid by not wearing a helmet and riding his bike on the side of the road, but Jesus H. Christ, he was a child! I hope like hell none of you have to experience what it feels like to put a child into the ground.
Like I said, I am more than disgusted with some of the comments being made here.
The rats chewed holes in my pantry wall and ate my food and defecated everywhere. So I set out rat traps and captured them. The disgusting part was that the rats were cannibals…I always found HALF a rat when I checked the trap, the other half had been eaten. Gross. I asked the rats to leave my house and find somewhere else to live, but they didn’t listen. And so I killed them.
The deer eat my apple trees and flowers, they are like locusts around here. They also jump in front of my car two or three times a week. Deer are sheep with antlers. I’m glad there are plenty of deer, because that means plenty of venison. My area is simply infested with deer, and I have no compunction about killing and eating a delicious deer every now and then. If the deer population gets too large it is compassionate to kill a few and thin the herd before they all starve to death. Kill them and eat them, I say.
The geese infest the parks and eat the grass. No big deal. Except for the poop. In most parks around here you can’t even walk because the grass is encrusted with goose feces. These are geese that have stopped migrating and have become residents year-round. Whenever I see all the geese clogging the parks with their waste, I always wonder why we can’t treat the homeless to beatiful Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners this year. Heh, Mr. Goose, if you want to live wild and free you better start migrating. If you choose to live among the humans you have chosen the life of a domestic animal. I have no problem harvesting surplus geese for festive meals for the needy.
Don’t get me wrong. I love animals, I enjoy having animals around. I think we absolutely need wilderness, and I hate the constant habitat destruction that goes on (except with rats). I hate that I will never get a chance to see a living thylacine, and I’m concerned about all the species that are headed the same way. But I am not sentimentally attached to any one particular animal. I want plenty of deer around, but I have no problem killing and eating a particular deer.
And the same applies to alligators. As a kid in the 70s I was very upset about the plight of the alligators and I would have favored the death sentence for anyone harming one. But now the alligators have recovered. They have their place, we have our place, and sometimes those places intersect and it’s all good.
Oh no. Lemur has been inconvenienced. Let the slaughter begin.
I’m very, very tired of this attitude that seems to be saying there should be no consequences for our actions. “But he was a child!” people shout, as though this somehow justifies being a moron. And in some people’s minds, it must. It must be perfectly okay to do breath-takingly stupid things so long as you’ve not yet come of legal age. And we are shocked and outraged that the laws of cause and effect have no respect for age. How dare the world operate on principles not of our devising?
“How dare you?” I hear the retort. “Have you done nothing stupid and reckless in your life which might well have gotten you killed?” Yes. Yes I have. And it’s purely random chance that I’m still alive today. And I’m okay with that, and have learned to play the odds in my favor, namely by avoiding those actions which have a high probability of leading to my sudden, gruesome end.
Where the hell does this attitude come from, that no one should be forced to account for their actions? The world is not a safe place, no matter what we like to believe, and sometimes terrible things happen to people who don’t think before they act. And this completely enrages many, many people. I don’t understand.
ratty
About three years ago, we had our pasture spragged with costal.
Dad was accompanied by his (then) 10 year old son-a truly nice boy that had lived on a ranch all his life and been around balers, spreaders etc. since he could crawl.
About a year later, we saw the death notice in our local paper.
The boy had gotten his jacket tangled in some equipment and had both of his arms wrenched off.
He died on the way to the hospital.
Was he being “… breath-takingly stupid…” ?
I doubt it.
A moment of carelessness cost him his life.
Did I do some real bone-headed things when I was his age?
Sure.
You’re right, the immutable laws of cause and effect do not factor in either age, innocence or experience.
We adults understand how final death is and how quick it can come.
Children believe that they are immortal.
Do I advocate killing every alligator in Florida to prevent another death?
No.
Do I think the child is question was behaving really stupidly?
Yes.
Do I think that his age may have been the reason for his foolish bravado?
Yes.
And he paid the ultimate price as a result.