The water is higher than usual, since it's been raining and storming quite a bit over the past few weeks. Sometimes it's difficult to spot the gators in the local gully, but with the water being higher than normal, they're out and about, and more visible. Here's a picture taken the other day of a large one swimming down the street.
OMG! Does the police or some kind of gator control know about your new neighbor the gator? I wish you and your family safety from gators, God protect you and yours from gators, amen. I can't stand gators, crocks and sharks somehow they give me a shudder even seeing them in pictures. This video is very graphic and frightening for the crock is a murderer too.
Wow, @Krissttina Isobe that's a huge crocodile! We all just know there are alligators here, so tend to watch out for them. Not everyone is as vigilant, though, and occasionally a gator will snatch up a pet with a careless owner. That happened nearby a year or two ago. The guy bought a nice high end house on a lake, and was agitated that a gator attacked and killed his dog when the dog jumped and swam in the lake, which of course was the gator's domain. I don't like to get too close to them, although I do have a pretty nice closeup I took of a gator's head and eye via optical zoom, thankfully, so I didn't have to get within harm's reach. We do occasionally have sharks here somewhat close to the shore, which is why I tend only to wade when I'm at the beach. I'm more concerned about the gators, wild boars, coyotes and snakes, because the stray cats wander off, and I also don't want the neighborhood deer being attacked. Haha @Joe Riley Before I moved here, I didn't even know there were gators in Texas (or elsewhere on the Gulf Coast, other than Florida), so I find them interesting. I had one go after my catch before when I was fishing, so I've learned to be very careful.
The Rio Grande Valley of Texas has alligators, although perhaps not so many as in the more eastern Gulf states. Still, it was known that there might be gators in any body of water, such as the resacas or reservoirs. There were rumors of an alligator in the completely fenced in reservoir in Los Fresnos, while I was working for the city, but most people didn't believe it, since the reservoir was at least a couple of miles from any other body of water. Then, some of the public works employees saw it, and it was sizable gator, which had apparently found a way under or over the fence. They will sometimes travel overland for long distances looking for new territory, and I guess that's what happened.
I wasn't aware that they were down in the Valley as well as up here. I never ventured into the resacas down there. @Ken Anderson when you were living down there, did you ever visit any of the wildlife refuges? It's been quite a while since I have visited the RGV, and back when I did, I was probably too scared of the javelina to venture into the refuges, but I would love to see an ocelot someday, and the area is very good for birding, which I'm now interested in. Here are a few links, in case anyone's interested in learning about the area, the ocelots, or javelina. http://www.americanforests.org/maga...grande-valley-national-wildlife-refuge-texas/ http://tpwd.texas.gov/landwater/land/habitats/trans_pecos/big_game/javelina/
Nice article and yes, that was the part of the Valley I lived in. The article even mentions Los Fresnos, and Bayview was just outside Los Fresnos.
Yes, the Laguna Atascosa Wildlife Refuge was near where I lived, just outside Bayview. We had enough alligators that they had a short hunting season on them in order to thin them out. At the time that I lived there, seeing an alligator, outside of the refuge, wasn't common unless you went looking for them, but I would sometimes see them along the road or in the resacas. The main thing that kept people from swimming in the resacas was a fear of amoebas though, since there was a type of amoeba that could get inside of someone and prove both incurable and deadly. Plus, there was the fact that most people in the Valley don't know how to swim. As a paramedic, I was always the one who had to jump in after people who drove their cars into a resaca, and would frequently end up with an ear infection from it.
I've seen documentaries about gators growing to be a ton big and man eaters like sharks they have a big area to grow in. If sharks are becoming euryhaline it can be a very unusual and frighteningsituation. Anyway you'd think that there would be a somewhere to report seeing gators and sharks near homes!
There are an amazingly large number of people who've never learned to swim. I think a lot of it has to do with income level/lifestyle, but some of the issue could be fear, as well. I learned via the YMCA when I was a child, thankfully. It always surprises me when I encounter someone who doesn't know how to swim, because I think it's a basic skill everyone should have, if only to save their life or someone else's. I think I do recall hearing about the amoeba issue. That would definitely keep me out of the resacas, although you obviously didn't have a choice, since it was your job.
Apparently they have found dangerous African Nile Corcodiles in some parts of Florida now. They don't know how these crocs got there; but the guess is that someone got a little one as a pet and then let it go, or that someone was deliberately setting this strain of crocodile loose in Florida so that they could spread there. They are said to be much more aggressive that other species of crocodiles, so if they spread will be a lot more dangerous to people who wander close to where one is at. Hopefully, they don't travel further than where they are and you don't end up with the crocodiles there as well as your neighborhood alligator, @Diane Lane ! http://www.usnews.com/news/offbeat/...rocodiles-in-florida-experts-say-its-possible
Man-eating crocodiles in Florida? You may want to avoid a swim in the swamp. A Nile crocodile that Joe Wasilewski found in Homestead, Florida. Wasilewski co-wrote a paper showing that this and two other recently captured reptiles are Nile crocs, a dangerous species native to Africa. (Joe Wasilewski/AP)