Plans are to go down to Brazos Bend for a while tomorrow, which will involve mingling with the ‘gators. Early morning or late afternoon will likely be the time I can spend there. So I’m wondering about alligators’, um, schedule. While I do want to see them, I wouldn’t mind missing the friskier part of their day.
Hmmm… let’s see. Gators are reptiles, which means they are cold-blooded, right?
So that means, when the sun comes out, they’re gonna start creeping out into open spaces to warm up a bit.
I’d probably opt for early morning. I do not know enough about gators to know if there’s a preferred feeding time. I’m going to guess they’re a little bit like sharks: eating machines. They probably eat, mate, and sleep and that’s about it. Mating season is something like October, IIRC.
I could be dead wrong on all of the above. But I can tell you: I’ve never seen a “frisky” gator in the 15 years I’ve lived in Florida. They can get a move on, I understand, but I’ve never seen one do anything except swim around or hang out on a log.
I think that they’re considered more of a hybrid now, but generally cold blooded is close enough. They are bulky and mostly slow moving.
Mating season is in the spring. IOW, right now in the United States. Gators seem to be more aggressive in the spring. Watch your step.
Define “frisky”. I’ve seen one around here crossing the street, although he was hardly doing a jig, he was moving at the same clip as a turtle. I recently posted about one that came in a kitchen very near an apartment we rented for a short while. A meth junkie was eaten by a gator on that same street, and a little further away a guy shagging golf balls on a course was grabbed by a large gator this weekend.
I do find gators fascinating and will look at one if I find one. But please do exercise caution. They are large predators and can be every bit as dangerous as sharks or poodles to those who don’t practice caution.
I am from Louisiana and not Florida but we are still the #2 gator state. If you could go on a swamp tour, that would be best but I am not sure how close those will be to where you are going. Alligators are semi-active all day especially if it is warm and they aren’t that aggressive towards grown humans. I have swam in alligator infested waters many times without incident although I liked to keep a healthy distance from the visible ones. Crocodiles are a different story when it comes to aggression and Florida has some of those as well so learn a blunt snout from a pointed one. I once knew a crazy old train engineer that had a 10 foot alligator called “Baby” that would come when called and heal and even follow him into his house from the pond out back.
Alligators love raw chicken and, oddly enough, large marshmallows (and small dogs if you have one you want to get rid of). A bag of large marshmallows might be appreciated by the local population.
NEVER feed alligators. This is how tourists get eaten in Florida. The gators lose their fear of people and begin to associate them with “raw chicken” or “marshmallows” and will stop differentiating between “people” and “food.”
Bringing food to an alligator is, IMHO, the dumbest thing you could do. Especially if you don’t want them “frisky.”
From Wikipedia:
When they’re sitting on a shelf in a shoe shop seems a fairly good time to visit the buggers 
Do you have a cite for this? I’ve been on several herpetology walks with biologists and have never heard this. I’ve only heard gators referred to as reptiles. I’m not challenging; just curious.
I stand corrected on this point. Further Googling revealed that May is peak mating season for gators, so, yeah, watch your step. The article Shibb linked to said May-August they are a little more aggressive due to mating and nesting and will feed more than they would in winter.
My understanding is they can move pretty quickly in short bursts, when aggravated or feeling threatened. Poking gators with sticks, or hand-feeding them seem like terrible ideas. That said, they are not nearly as aggressive as crocs, so if you are walking a swampy path and come across one, you can probably just back away slowly or give it a wide berth. I wouldn’t try to get past one, or throw things at it to get it to move away first. I’d find another path.
In my experience, if you leave 'em alone, they’ll just sit there like a bump on a log. A good telephoto lens is all you need to get a good up-close look at 'em.
I’m told they can reach 30 mph, and most humans cannot outrun a gator. Because they are lizard-like, they’re supposed to be able to climb trees. If you’re being attacked or chased down, you’re supposed to run in a zig zag pattern. Apparently, they don’t have double wishbone suspension like my Honda, and cannot corner well. I give them a lot of room and keep a good amount of space between me and the gator.
One of my biggest fears is accidentally whacking one with a paddle while canoeing and/or dumping the canoe and accidentally kicking one while trying to swim out. Gator attacks are relatively rare, say, compared to shark attacks, but I didn’t try to claim the fear was rational. :rolleyes: I just don’t like swimming with things that can eat me, which presents some problems at the beach.
ETA: Sharks or poodles. 
Good one.
From the State of Florida alligator facts page (yes, they have one):
Sorry, I thought a cite might have been in order for that contention but got lazy on it. It’s just one of those things I remember from somewhere but never quite sure where.
Interesting! Thanks, Shibb!
Oh, and check it out… from that same site… the nonsense my friend told me about running away in a zig-zag pattern? Utter BS. :smack: Ignorance fought again.
I dunno… if I ever found myself in that situation, I’d be hard-pressed not to execute a series of uneven zigzags, feints, rolls and head fakes. Not to elude the gator, but simply to befuddle anyone who might be watching.
:: snerk ::
Like the time I was rolling my garden hose back up and didn’t realize I was dragging it through a fire ant nest. The hose was dragging against my leg and all of a sudden… my leg was on fire! I dropped the hose and started hollering and slapping my own leg, dancing around the yard hysterically, trying to get all those little bastids off my leg. “Aiiigh Aiigh Aiighhhhh!” : slap : : hop : : slap : “AIIIGH” : slap slap :
Convinced the neighbors were… befuddled. I’m sure they were all, “WTF is she doing?”
Gators are extremely quick. I had a cat try to swat mine a few years ago and he got a crunched paw for his efforts. The veterinarian figured it out immediately with all the needle like holes. They can move their heads faster than you can move your hand.
You have a GATOR?
In MICHIGAN?
Don’t mess with a gator’s nest. Never pick up a baby gator. Don’t feed the gators. Don’t tease 'em, either. They look all slow and stuff but they can move; a park ranger once swore to me that they can outrun a man over a forty yard dash but it is doubtful they could hold out for the full forty yards.
ShibbOleth, I saw a six to eight foot gator on the bank beside a catch pond at the Seminole campus of Pinellas College last week.
One of the problems with hiking out in the rural areas near me is that even on the roads you have to deal with alligators.
FWIW, crocodilians are the surviving group of archosaur, the group to which the pterosaurs and dinosaurs belonged and from which the birds are descended. (Those who love cladistic nitpickery would say “…and which includes the birds” to conclude that last sentence.)
Other than the turtles (on whose present classification I’d need to research), the other surviving “reptiles” [snakes, lizards, tuatara] are all part of a sister group, the lepidosaurs.
Bottom line is that despite external appearance, an alligator is much more closely related to an albatross or a wren than to a Komodo dragon.
Now is not the time to be out on a gator-infested lake, I can tell you that. And according to my husband (who used to do a lot of boating on gator-infested lakes) and several websites, they are very active in the dusk/dawn hours (crepuscular!)
Swamp tours would be best? I’m not so sure.
I recently enjoyed a long vacation during which I visited both Florida and Louisiana.
While in Florida, as a dutiful tourist, I went on a supposed ‘tour’ of the Everglades, with a company whose colourful leaflets feature striking close-ups of 'gators. It was both a ripoff and a mild disappointment. The ‘tour’ lasted about 30 minutes. It consisted of a single loop around a strikingly dull and barren section of the Everglades. The scenery was not particularly notable (some trees and rather unexciting wetland territory). The wildlife was similarly uninteresting (a few turtles, one or two herons, a couple of very small, very still 'gators just about visible in the middle distance). The guide was hopeless. Although he did toss out a few facts from rote memory, he was trying to turn it into a rather shabby stand-up comedy gig, hoping we’d like him and give a good tip.
The experience in LA was very different, but possibly even more disappointing for some. I went on a ‘swamp’ tour. It lasted two hours. The guide was great: highly informative, entertaining, and very illuminating when responding to questions. The scenery was genuinely spectacular in places, particularly the rather eerie ‘other world’ look and feel of those parts where the surface of the water is entirely covered in green algae and micro-vegetation, as if the water were solid green paint. I thoroughly enjoyed it and we did get close-up views of some wildlife, but we didn’t see a single 'gator. This wasn’t so disappointing to me personally. I’ve been to places like Malaysia where you can visit toursity croc and gator farms and get as close as your sanity allows to hundreds of the beasts, and what’s more they’re far bigger and nastier looking than anything you’re likely to see in FL or LA. But some others on the tour expressed their annoyance and frustration that we didn’t catch so much as a glimpse of a single gator.
All of which tedious account I offer by way of a cautionary tale to anyone who wants to see gators and is pinning their hopes on such tours, and is taken in by the glossy leaflets the tour operators stuff into every hotel room.
Next time you’re in Florida, give me a shout. I’ll show you some good spots to visit.