Swamp Day

Went out for an airboat ride today.

Four hours back in the bayous, taking a look around.

Some of the canals had people fishing. Others were completely choked with plants.

But these airboats...they can go pretty much anywhere.

And there were gators.

Saw quite a few of the reptiles today, but most moved off too fast for me to get good pics of them.

This guy below was the exception. He didn't move for a long time.

But when he did go, he moved like lightning. Damn those things can move fast.

Pretty good day. Fun and interesting. I'm definitely not in Appalachia any more...or downtown Washington, DC.

Went gatoring again today.

Headed back down to the swamp to see gators again. Was not disappointed.

My friend the panhandling gator was out and parked by the dock again.

Then there was this four-footer off the boardwalk a short distance away.

And this living, breathing PSA explaining why you don't leave the boardwalks or reach down into the water beside them:

Not sure how long it was, but it's tail was visible on the other side of the boardwalk and the walk was six feet across.

Beautiful place out here, but you need to watch your surroundings.

Swamp Thing

I just found this neat new critter today while out and about down in Barataria.

Closer:

I tawt I taw an Alligator!

I did! And here it comes to see me!

Right up to the dock I was on.

It seems friendly enough. And it'd be hela helpful with the cats and the chickens around here...and dodgy door-to-door solicitors, too.

So how to get it in the car?

Oh listen...it's saying hello.


See ya later, Alligator.

Taking a bite out of crime, southern style.

Down in Florida recently, a punk named Matthew Riggins told his girlfriend that he was going to go burglarize some homes. "Cool," she likely said. "Steal me some neat stuff, too."

Riggins and a pal roamed the Barefoot Bay neighborhood in Brevard County until they were spotted by police, at which point they ran and hid down by a lake. As police searched for him, Riggins called his girlfriend back and told her that he was hiding from the police. A few minutes later however, the police heard screaming down by the lake but they weren't able to find the source. They also didn't find Riggins, who was reported missing the next day.

Florida man killed by alligator while hiding from police

Yep. Justice came swimming. Ten days later, authorities found Riggins' body in that lake...most of it, anyway. And when they tried to retrieve it, an 11-foot gator appeared and aggressively objected.

The gator was subsequently killed, and the rest of Riggins was found in it's stomach.

It's believed that Riggins, a serial burglar who is thought to be responsible for a string of local home break-ins, tried to hide in or near the lake to escape detection by police dogs being used to search for him. Unfortunately for him, he attracted the attention of the alligator, which dragged him into the lake and killed him.

My thoughts are simple. No sympathy for Matthew Riggins. He was a piece of shit and his demise is no great loss to society. I feel bad for the alligator. It was just doing what gators do, and the fact that it also performed a community service at the same time is bonus points as far as I'm concerned. I'm thinking that we could use a few gators like that one on our southern border.

Overlooked in the news stories this far has been Riggins' girlfriend. She is the one who knew in advance his plans to break into people's homes and she apparently did not object or notify the authorities. In my view, she's as guilty as he and his other accomplice are. She needs to go to jail too, or failing that, she should be tossed to another gator.

Floridiots and Alligators...always an amusing combination

So down Florida way, Mike Karris and his fiancee, Rae Wilkerson, went to the St. Marks Wildlife Refuge, apparently unclear as to what might actually live in a wildlife refuge in Florida. They brought their 11 year old Dachshund named Cody, aka "Box Lunch" with them, and they thought that it would be a good idea to let Cody run around off the leash in this wildlife refuge. By the water. In Forida.

Insert moment of silence for Cody here.

Alligator eats Cody the dachshund at a Florida wildlife refuge

Now Ray Charles could have seen that coming, but these two were shocked and surprised, and even mad at the wildlife refuge and it's staff for "letting" an alligator be around people and tasty little dogs.

Karris, an executive at a consulting firm, estimated that the predator must have crossed 10 feet of grass and gravel before reaching the boat ramp, grabbing the helpless dog and dragging it away in its maw.

The dog owner has acknowledged that it was his and Wilkerson's responsibility to keep Cody tied up, as park rules dictate, but he argued that it was not a good idea for the wildlife refuge to keep around an alligator that was that aggressive.

Hello? Wildlife refuge. Alligators are wildlife, last I checked. Little weiner dogs? Not so much. And leash laws like the ones in place at this wildlife refuge? Obviously those are for other people, not entitled liberal types like Karris and Wilkerson. Not sure what sort of business pays this guy to "consult" but they can't be getting their money's worth. He's clearly an idiot.

At least the refuge manager isn't bending over to kiss this fool's ass.

St Marks manager Terry Peacock noted that the park has removed alligators that were aggressive towards people in the past, but said that the reptile that ate Cody had never posed a safety risk before.

‘I can't punish an alligator for being an alligator,’ Peacock said. ‘That's just an alligator being its normal self.’

So what did Karris and Wilkerson do about this? Well for starters, they began calling news stations, trying to get their story printed. And they made sure to include plenty of cheery selfies, because, after all, this is really about them, and not Cody or hungry gators.

"Our dog got eaten because we were careless. So this is us, having a nice Jeep ride."

(You just know that Jeep has an Obama sticker on it somewhere...you just know it.)

It scares me that these two are actually getting married. Next thing you know, they'll start having kids. Let's hope that they do better with those than they did with that dog.

Father/daughter day, Redneck style

Can anything be more heartwarming than watching Cletus spending quality time with little Lurline, bonding as they taunt killer reptiles with their bare feet?



Makes you wonder how long before Cletus is taking his little tobacco-spitter to the prosthetist so she can watch him get fitted for a new plastic foot. Remember, folks...in America today, that guy's vote counts as much as yours and mine. Kinda explains alot, doesn't it?

(h/t alloutdoor.com)

Alligators: Nature's little karma-bringers.

Florida's Bryan Zuniga still has me laughing every time I see his mug shot.

Bryan jumped out of his car, kicked through a fence, and fled into the swamp to get away from the police, who were stopping him for a traffic infraction last week. He escaped the police officers initially, but ran smack into the jaws of an alligator, which administered a righteous chomping on him.

Pinellas Park man attacked by alligator while trying to flee traffic stop

He managed to escape the alligators as well, but when he went to the hospital for treatment for the gator bites, the police showed up and locked him up for running away initially and for driving on a suspended license.

Go Gators, indeed!


I'm thinking that the police might just want to get a few of these reptiles in place of the usual German Shepherd or Malinois dogs. I know that I'd surrender right quick if I heard them yell: "Come out now or we'll send in the alligators!"

Alligator bites bum and gets killed. How is THAT fair?

So in Florida, a vagrant bum at a homeless camp jumped into the river and wound up getting bitten by an alligator that everyone apparently knew was there.

9-foot alligator attacks man going for dip in creek near homeless camp

Authorities come along, take the bum to a hospital, and kill the alligator.

Now I ask you, who made that stupid call? Alligators don't panhandle, apply for welfare, steal or vote for Democrats. Were it MY choice, the alligator would be the one getting a vet check-up, and the bum and the rest of his useless camp-mates would have been tossed into the river for the other gators.

But I guess that I'm just a meany.

When nature comes to the door, sometimes it's best not to answer

Of course if you're in the South and an alligator materializes at your motel, there's always that one guy who says to his friends "Hey! Hold muh beer an' watch this!"

Results: Predictable. End score: Alligator 1; Redneck 0.


Here's hoping that they at least released the poor gator again somewhere else.

All I ever find is change and spent brass shell casings...

But I'm using a flashlight to look behind the couch from now on. See if I just reach back there blindly any more.

3-year-old finds alligator behind couch

SAO PAULO (AP) - Firefighters say they have removed a 5-foot-long (1.5 meter-long) alligator who was hiding behind a couch after floodwaters washed it into a home in northern Brazil.

Capt. Luiz Claudio Farias of the Parauapebas city fire department says that when the floodwaters receded on Tuesday, a woman saw her 3-year-old son petting something behind the couch. It was an alligator.

He says "she snatched the boy away and called" firefighters.

Farias said Wednesday the alligator was apparently well fed. "If he was hungry he could have seriously hurt or even killed the boy."

The alligator was taken to an environmentally protected area near the city and released into a river.

Better yet..."Hey Murphy!"

More trip pics.

A few more pics from my recent travel with Lagniappe. One nice day, we went alligator hunting down near Cape Canaveral. And since it was nice and sunny on that one day, we found plenty of them right in plain view of the road.

Lagniappe at one point had his head out the window barking at one that was sitting on the bank and I missed the photo because I was trying to keep him inside the vehicle. I kept telling him that it was a fight that he'd lose, but I don't think that he believed me. Anyway, here are some of the others:




And to think I almost forked over $18.00 to see captive alligators in a park in St Augustine. Why spend the dough when there are so many of them that you can see for free live and up close?

But here's a sign of the times--a sign just for stupid people. Wouldn't you think that everything on here is just common sense? Of course this is in the state where even the natives can't figure out simple things like presidential ballots.

And in the "too stupid for words" department...

We have Adrian Apgar.

Adrian is a Darwin candidate in training. A year ago, an alligator bit off his arm as he waded naked in a lake, high on crack cocaine. So what do they find the other night? Apgar, again naked, this time in a creek with a 12-foot gator bearing down on him

Deputies were on routine patrol Thursday night when they saw Apgar's pick-up. They ran the tag, and figured out it was the gator guy—again.

When investigators found him, they couldn't believe what they saw—he was in the water, and a gator was about 50 feet away.

"They called for him. He would lower his voice, 'ssshhhhh, tell 'em to be quiet.' He was talking to the alligators. He told them, 'turn out the lights, there is a 30 footer out there,'" Judd said.

And the deputies went in and got him, literally pulling him away from the jaws of death once again.

The sheriff says his deputies have put their lives on the line for him twice now and he Apgar may not be so lucky the next time..

"If he gets in trouble again, we have to consider our safety next time, instead of his," Judd said.

Meaning the next time, deputies might not be so quick to jump in with both feet.

source

Every police department needs one of these.

we've seen police dogs, and police horses, but in Florida, we now have a case where a theif running from police was apprehended by what appears to be a police alligator!

OK, maybe it was more like a vigilante alligator, but still...

Apparently it all began last week in Florida when Miccosukee police, assisted by Sweetwater canine units, responded to a call on the Miccosukee Indian Reservation about vehicles being broken into. They pursued two suspects, one of whom surrendered. However the other one--obviously in competition for the 2007 Darwin awards--jumped into a large pond behind the casino, ignoring several signs that warned of live alligators.

Story has it that he was trying to swim away from the police and their police dogs. Now lots of times police dogs will jump right in the water after a suspect but I'm guessing that these police dogs read the signs and said "Ain't no way in hell we're going in there!" News reports say that witnesses were shouting to the man to swim back to shore. When the man finally spotted the alligator, eyewitnesses said he screamed but then disappeared under the water. Divers found what was left of him on the bottom of the pond the next day. (And those divers had to have some serious brass ones to be in that water after that!)

The alligator, nicknamed Pancho by reservation employees, was 9 feet long. "Some gators have a nasty disposition and he was a nasty gator," said local alligator expert Brian Woods of All American Gator. Well sadly, now Pancho is a dead gator. Florida law requires that gators that kill people be killed themselves. Apparently there's no exception for gators that thin out the scumbag criminal population or chlorinate the local gene pool.

source source

No more swimming in southern lakes for me

Nope. Not gonna do it. Not after Bill Hedden of Summerville, SC went for a dip in Lake Moultrie and an 11-foot, 550 lb alligator tore his arm off two weeks ago. According to this story, the retired U.S. Navy master chief had checked both the shoreline and water for signs of gators before going swimming, his son said. He had been coming to the area for 25 years and felt the risk was minimal. But Bill Hedden was only in the water for about five minutes before being attacked. The gator snatched him and literally ripped his arm right off him. Hedden escaped and made it to the beach in the recreation area (where, presumably, others were swimming) and he was aided by some nurses who happened to be there enjoying the day. But for them he'd probably have died.

The arm was later recovered from the gator after it was killed, but it could not be reattached.



And to think when I was young, I was worried about sharks. (OK, that was right after seeing "Jaws!" in the theater.)

Reports say that Bill Hedden is recovering and both Lagniappe and I wish him the best.