Growing up in Louisiana, I’ve always been fascinated by alligators. There is something about these ancient, dinosaurian reptiles that strikes both cautious fear and wonder in me. And now where I live in South Carolina, there’s no shortage of gators, some of them quite fearsomely immense. I see them fairly often on the banks or in the waters of the lagoons and ponds I pass on my frequent walks at nearby parks and gardens. They lie in the sun in ominous, magisterial , prehistoric repose and mystery. They are enigmas of the first order, and that’s what makes them so interesting and compelling.

My curiosity has led me, a very cautious person by nature, to do some rather foolish things when it comes to sightings of these creatures, or perhaps more accurately, close and unexpected encounters. Just a few weeks ago, for example, I was walking deep into the swampy areas of Cypress Gardens when I came across a medium sized alligator, maybe 4-6 feet long. It was drowsily stretched out right at the edge of the path I was traversing. I came to a stop just in time and pondered what to do. Eerily reminiscent of my earliest encounter with big gators back in 2002, this time I foolishly tiptoed and then sprinted past him, as not doing so would mean I’d have to turn around and backtrack, curtailing my walk into the best part of the gardens. Nothing happened, and he didn’t move an inch. But I should not have done that and warned some people coming toward me in the opposite direction, about the gator.

Fast track back 22 years to a visit to a very large Nature preserve, and this description of epic adult foolishness. Here is the unchanged account of that afternoon’s adventure, written shortly after it occurred, and which made for some incomparably embellished stories at work, my co-workers shaking their heads solemnly as they laughed at my foolhardy misadventure.

Don’t try to mess with alligators,
Written December 21, 2002

…I stopped to take more reflection photos and proceeded to the last stretch of dike trail, the final leg of the hike through two more areas of former rice fields, now intermittently flooded.

Suddenly, I was startled to see a rather large, but not immense, alligator rise from his sunning perch on the dike about 30 feet in front of me and splash mightily into the water to the right of the dike. Whew! That was a surprise. Didn’t know they’d be out in this cool weather. Hmm. Strange creatures.

But the surprises didn’t stop there. The first gator’s bigger cousin lay in somber repose another ten feet ahead. He was lying lengthwise on the dike in a patch of sunlight. Immense. Immobile. Reptilians in the extremes. Modern-day dinosaur. He was looking right at me with one eye open.

This gator must have been 8-10 feet in length, just based on the size of the big reptilian head. Razor teeth clamped on the upper jaw. A formidable sight.

I must have been a sight for him, too, but not enough of a fright to cause him to seek refuge in the still waters just feet from where he rested, as his more considerate cousin had done moments before.

A conundrum. I was near the end of my two-mile hike. My car was just a short distance beyond this statue-still, but live, alligator obstacle. There was no short way around him. There was water on either side of the dike. He didn’t seem to want to get wet. Neither did I.

It was getting late in the afternoon. The gate would be closing before long. The day’s long shadows began to lengthen. It was either the gator getting out of my way, or else I was going to have to head back in the direction I had come, back to the cypress swamp and around that on another trail a mile or so long, in order to return to the visitor center and my car.

How I didn’t want to walk all the extra distance. I stomped on the ground in exasperation, thinking the earthen dike would shake a bit under my insistent foot pounding and startle the sullen, immobile monster in my direct path and provoke him to slide back k to the water from whence he came.

No such thing. I threw a stick at him. It was as if a feather had landed in front of his long snout. Did I detect his head swivel an inch to the right, the front clawed feet gripping the ground as he started to move toward me. Nawww.. Just my imagination.

Nevertheless, at this point I came to my cold senses and realized this was not a controlled taping of the Nature show, “Wild Kindom,” and I was no Marlin Perkins in a safari shirt.

The gator was real and big. The gator was not a tame and docile pet at a reptile farm. He didn’t get fed whole chickens for his dinner and fish bon bons for dessert. I could have appeared to his less-than-perfect vision ( Imagined) as a tall, skinny shore bird, an ugly egret wandering where it shouldn’t be going.

With this sudden reality check, and the knowledge that I was perhaps not as far from this creature as I imagined, I turned around, put on my extra coat, and walked briskly along the trail at the edge of the swamp, scaring another gator in the process who rapidly ran across the trail and into the swamp where he should have been anyway. I made it out with plenty of time to spare, but was exhausted and worn out.

What a day! Too bad the big gator was not very fearful of a long-legged creature out for a pleasant jaunt in an urban wilderness. This was my first close encounter of the reptilian-gator kind.

Gator photos taken this Spring on my walks:

https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/47k9UR55Vq