RE: [ft-l] St Marks trip

At 07:51 AM 12/6/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>About 5 to 10 feet. I was flyfishing in a community pond in South Florida 
>about 20 or so years ago and I guess I sidled up to close to a sunning 
>gator that  that was resting on the shoreline. As soon as I got a feisty 
>bass that put up a bit of struggle, the gator reacted. I only pieced what 
>happened after the fact. That bass literally disappeared a few (maybe 1 to 
>3) feet next to me in a blink of an eye. I'm  a bit more careful these 
>days, but only a little bit :)

It definitely pays to be careful, but I think they are more of a threat in
the water than on land, at least for an adult. We had a diver killed in
Wakulla Springs several years ago. He went outside the swimming area and a
big alligator got him. He was discovered tucked under a log at the bottom
of the spring by some passengers in a glass bottom boat. I'll bet that gave
some people nightmares. 

The Wakulla River has scads of alligators in it. I took my daughter over
there last week also, and we went on the jungle boat tour. I'll bet we saw
30 gators in a two mile round trip. We saw three of them sunning on one
log. The coolest thing we saw, though, was a manatee feeding in the
swimming area. We had to go up on the diving platform to get a good look at
her. That was the first one I had ever seen in the wild.


Erskine Fincher
fincher2@nettally.com

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