Florida MEN, Part I

We were visiting Rick and Dee in Gainesville Florida. They were alternating shifts of the "ya gotta move here" tour. Dee gives one tour and Rick gives an entirely different one.

I had told Rick that I wanted to see some gators. He told us that in this area ANY body of water that isn't surrounded by a fence will have a gator in it. Cool. I wanted to see some.

Rick took us to a place that he hadn't been to in about 5 years. It is in a section of Gainesville called Payne's Prairie. It has all kinds of wildlife. Many years ago a movie was shot there and they brought in Buffalo/Bison for the filming. When the filmmakers left town they just let the buffaloes roam (this was before the days of "carry in -- carry out"). There are also wild horses, more birds than you could imagine, and gators.

We walked on a path that had warning signs at the trailhead that had some token "gator warnings", like what to do if one is blocking your path and especially the fact that you should NOT be out there at dusk because of an interesting fact about a gator's diet: During the day, gators select their meals according to size (Poodles, no Great Danes), but once it is dark, size doesn't matter, "everything is supper". OK. I will pay attention to the height of the sun.

I was looking forward to seeing a gator or two in their natural environment. Rick brought us to his favorite "gator hole". We peered through the moss draped branches and saw a big gator tail. After we adjusted to that, we spotted more, and more. We backed out and walked partway around this 50 foot round pond. It had non-muddy water that was brown with tannic acid, so it looked like a primitive cup of tea. Very primitive. Prehistoric primitive. There were at least 10 gators in view at any one time and more kept appearing.
Beth kept looking behind her to make sure we weren't being stalked.

I was taking a lot of pictures while Rick, who grew up in the South, kept trying to get me to follow him down the steep embankment to get a "closer look". Since I grew up waaaaay up North, I thought that I didn't really need a "closer look" that had the possibility of being from the inside of a gator. So I took pictures from a safe(r) distance.

When we were done at that hole we continued on a pleasant walk past bird watchers with binoculars. We watched long beaked birds poking in streams. We listened to large quantities of "cooing" birds that stayed out of sight. Very pleasant.
Then we came upon a much larger pond. It had gators too. Not as many per square foot as the small hole but it seemed to be enough to eat a large quantity of anything.
Rick, being a Southerner, felt obliged to go down and introduce himself. Beth and I stayed behind taking pictures and trying to convince Rick to throw us his car keys before he went any further.
It was going to be a long walk home.
As he got closer and closer to the edge, more and more eyes kept appearing on the water. Now I want to clarify something here: Us Northerners don't think of eyeballs as particularly dangerous by themselves but, in my opinion, eyeballs that seem to be attached to a huge set of teeth, hundreds of pounds of muscle, and perhaps most importantly, a large stomach that may be feeling hungry at the moment, should be allowed a certain amount of "personal space".

Rick is a Southern-Preacher-Man. He might have connections that I don't, but I think that his "Southern-Man" was leading the way at the moment. The "Preacher" part wasn't involved.

It takes a long time to step through the grasses and brush when you are trying to avoid stepping on water moccasins, so I didn't try to rush him or distract him, although I DID keep pleading for the car keys. He has a good arm, I knew he could get them to me, but I also knew that if he was busy being eaten, he may not have the presence of mind to put his house guests first and pull his keys out of his pocket.

When he was down there by the water, he kept pointing out various gators that were popping up here and there, just looking at the menu, I suppose.

Suddenly Rick snapped his arms over his head and screamed!

The gators all splashed into the water at the same time. The water was churning and there were NO gators to be seen. The Southern-Man was happy. He looked around with a posture that said "come on, you want a piece of me?". I jsut wanted his car keys. Beth kept checking behind us.

Rick climbed back very carefully.

We had a nice stroll looking at birds, turtles, and other gators in the marsh.

We went back to Rick's house. When Dee (Rick's wife) looked at the pictures I thought that she would be angry and bawl Rick out for being "such a knucklehead/macho/typicalman", but no, she's seen him do this a LOT of times. If she was walking with him, she wouldn't even slow down to watch him confront the gators, she just keeps walking.

But then again, she probably has her own set of keys to Rick's Mustang.


(Click on the picture to see a slideshow)