My daughter called this morning and said they have alligators in the canal that their yard fronts in SW Florida. The Lab I gave her years ago was barking at the edge of the canal and her husband went to see what was the problem and an alligator had one leg up on the sea wall!! They have been there 7 years and this is the first time they have seen one...now she says she saw another right after that. They have 2 little girls who play out there. I'd have the for sale sign up by nightfall but she seems very calm

I left Florida because of divorce and alligators....Housing is cropping up everywhere on every canal and Lake and alligators are in them all. Man keeps encroaching on their territory and people know there are alligators and still buy and try to live on water.....I can never understand why as they are risking their lives as well as their pets......Alligators are also migratory and will travel miles to settle in a small amount of water to call their own.......I lost one puppy to one with an electric fence and it is terrible.....Why paly with nature??????

Leeda, you are so right. My daughter is in denial! She and the families around her toss their left over chicken, ham...anything in the canals for the crab to eat. Then she tells me that the town will come and bait and catch him...what they have been tossing in there on a regular basis is bait!

I just wanted stories of alligators harrassing labs so I could tell her. I'm sure if I google I can find news of alligators vs pets and humans.

Having lost an old Golden to a gator, and knowing of at least 3 other dogs that were also killed by gators--2 mixed breeds and a Springer Spaniel--I can tell you that alligators do more than harrass dogs. I personally believe that alligators consider dogs to be a great delicacy. I've seen one stalking a dog that was on the shore of a pond, waiting for it to go in the water. I would be worried about the children, but the dog is even more likely to be attacked.

I would be very concerned. Alligators can also climb fences.

In general, gators don't want to mess with us. The real problem is the people who feed them and cause them to become either dependant on the food they get from people or they lose that natural instinct to steer clear of us.(you might try telling them that it is also against the law to feed the wildlife in florida for just such reasons, and the idea of throwing out by leftovers for the crabs seems odd indeed. I am not saying that gators are some nice cuddley creatures by any means, but being a Florida gal for 30 years, I feel for them that we invade their homes then trap and kill them when we are inconvenienced by them. If you live here, especially on the water I feel you have a responsibility to understand the natural order of things. You DON'T walk your dogs (or children) by canals, swampy areas or even by large ponds or riversides. If you choose to live on canals etc for the pleasure of having your boat at your back door you had better expect the creepy crawlies to be there as well. (rattlesnakes, water moccasins, too) This topic happens to be one that hubby and I have talked about many times as it annoys us both to no end how people here will flock to build another housing complex/condo whatever anywhere there is more than two inches of water and if there is none, they create it with no thoughts to how it effects everything else here. My hubby, a Texan, always rants about how "This dang place was built on a fricken swamp....what do you people want??" please don't take offense, I am not belittling anyones loss, as I can only imagine how heartbreaking such a thing would be, but with a little respect and common sense, you can certainly put the odds in your favor that you and your loved ones will be safe....now those darn fire ants!! thats a different story altogether!
Annie

I'll agree with everything Annie said. I'm a 3rd generation floridian! I live on Lake Harris, which is a huge lake in Central florida. It's also occupied by a huge number of alligators. I have one that suns himself down the dirt road a bit, and he covers the whole thing...he's close to 11 feet.

#1 My dogs aren't allowed to go to the lake, my kids can fish, but aren't allowed to go swimming. Of course, I did as a kid. This same gator has sunned in the same place as long as 20 years now.

Dogs love alligators, no doubt,,,they spash, and make all the right noises!! The SOUND good to the gator. They go where there is food. If they've been dumping food in the canal, then they've been (unkowningly) feeding the gator. He's now your best friend! If the dog goes near the water at the same times everyday, you can guarantee that gator has been watching, and wants a snack.

I wouldn't go sticking the for sale sign out just yet! There's a huge drought in florida right now, gators are migrating to where ever there is water at the moment!!! For cying out loud,,,Lake Okeechobee is so low at the moment, they are seeing the bottom of parts never before uncovered. Finding artifacts that are hundreds of years old! Where are they supposed to go? My husband and son have licenses for the state of florida gator kill. They do it atleast once,,now twice a year to cut population.
Gators are just doing what they do. STop throughing food in the canal, keep your dog away for a little bit, and most likely the gator will move on if we get some good rain.

You can try calling florida fish and game, but most likely they have so many calls, they can't handle them all right now and unless the gator has eaten someone or something,,,they aren't going to kill it unless it's a nuisance. By the way, they don't catch release them, they just kill them.


GOod luck!!! I know someone who is a licensed trapper down south. I can give you his name and number if you email me.

Just thought I would add that I lived on the 2nd natural habitat for alligators in Florida which was Lake Jessup after Lake Okeechobee....No one fed the alligators and no one was allowed to swim or skidoo as there were several 100,000's of them.....

What is shocking is now each property on that Lake is going for $1,000,000. and more. Condo's are being put up right on it.....There is a huge Town Center and several walking paths and new communities....You will not have to throw food to have them attack. Their keenest sense is their eyes and they wait for an opportunity......There have already been several incidences.....Man is encroaching on their territory and they don't like it.

I wouldn't live near water in Florida with animals....

Always been a personal opinion for most. But I've lived on this lake all my life, my great grandmother built and lived right next door to my house, since 1965. I've never lost a dog to an alligator, and as far as I know, no one here around me has. Why? we don't let our dogs go down there. Actually, mine have had jail breaks through the years, and gotten down there a few times,,,swam and ran.
Pretty hard to NOT live near water in florida. It's everywhere.

The state of florida has had 18 confirmed deaths of humans since 1948. There are more shark bits per year than that.

Gators are the predatory creatures who are waiting to eat you. Most likely you won't see one, the minute you walk up on one they run. Unless they are protecting eggs, or maybe breeding season and territory related. Very unlikely.

The majority don't attack people, and if they do eat a dog, it's because the dog fits the description of most small creatures that it would eat.

It's not rocket science to know that you don't clean fish or throw leftovers in the water that gators live in....that basically means EVERY SINGLE body of water there is. You don't swim or walk near bodies of waters during dusk and dawn. Prime feeding times.

Most likely there has always been gators in that canal, but now everytime someone or something walks to the age, it's like ringing the dinner bell!

They get a bad rap, but when you think how many people live near bodies of water in florida, and then add the actual statistics for attacks and deaths. It's plain to see they aren't killing machines.

Gators ARE NOT the predatory creatures who are waiting to eat you.

I so need an edit button.

I knew what you meant:)

Yes, Leeda, I know what you mean about all the building. Its nuts to me really.
Do people really think they are going to come to these places and just eradicate anything dangerous so they can have this property that probably should be left alone?
There is a wonderful dog beach we go to alot caladeisi island....you have to walk along a path a ways to get to the dog beach and there are signs that warn of the rattlesnakes and such....but one day it wasn't the animals you would think that were a threat, it was the raging raccoons! As we walked by some palmetto scrubs we heard them screeching at us, we were warned by a terrier owner who crossed before us, and he wasn't kidding:)
My dad used to work at NASA when they trapped "BIG JOE" the gator back in the 80's. He was just a big ol lazy gator who was so big he managed to get himself a pass instead of a bullet and now I take my son to visit him when we go to Busch Gardens as he is STILL alive and kicking....well, sleeping actually but still he is pretty neat.
I love Florida wildlife, from the gopher tortoises to the gators and think that as long as we keep in mind that they "own" this place...especially the water, we will be fine. Tambra had a great point about the shark bites, but even better is the fact that you are even more likely to get hit by lightning around here than getting bitten by either !! Eeeks:)

Thank you all for your advice and stories. I will pass them on to my daughter. I thoughly agree about it being the alligators' territory. She had a 3 foot orange and brown snake in her livingroom three years ago at 2am when she was nursing her 3 day old infant. She didn't even tell this helping Grandma until we were on the way to the airport for my return trip to New York. I don't think I would enjoy living on the water down there but they seem too.

Now the snake thing would bother me I live off in the woods, actually the swamp between me and the lake belongs to the Audubon society. My family donated it during the 60's to them. So now it's wildlife sancuary. The building here in Lake county is growing so fast it's a nightmare! I have a very large group of coyotes that now live there, and I think they've run out of room to roam. We had a florida panther for many years, last time I saw one was about 15 years ago.
The raccoons in this year are buffet fed!!! almost as big as my dogs.


As for the snake, my husband is scared to death of snakes, he once shot a whole in my laundry floor thinking he saw a snake, in fact it turned out to be one of those purple skank lizards

Have to agree with the others that have talked about people encroaching on the wildlife habitat.
So many people today have no ties to the land within several generations and have never learned to live with wildlife nor understand them.
What has been said about the alligators is also true of most wildlife in this country.
Any given year there are many incidences of bears, coyotes, foxes, deer, birds, etc., trying to co-habitate in suburbia or many small towns and cities. Pale Male(the red tailed hawk) in NY’s Central Park is a prime example.
You would think that the tragedy of the lost wetlands that once buffered New Orleans would make more people stop to reconsider where they build.
I can remember how beautiful and serene it was on the shores of Lake Erie before the condos started blocking the view, the jet ski’s appeared, and the swamplands were filled up.
Sure miss the days when common sense and pride in the land was more abundant.

Two-three years ago they put a retention pond behind my property about 50 feet from my fence line. A 6 foot gator moved in. I contacted Florida Wildlife to ask what to do and they put me in touch with a nuisance gator trapper.

The nuisance gator trapper told me that anything over 4 feet should NOT be in a residential area with children and pets. The retention pond will not have enough food in it to keep it fed and it will come and look for other sources of food. They are creatures to be respected. They have no morals or values, they will eat their young and eat each other in order to survive, so a dog or child is nothing. If it needs food, it will come up to find it. The gator trapper also asked where my dogs were at night, as that is when the gator does most of its moving around to find food. He told me that even though I kept my dogs on the front end of my property that the gator could smell the dogs as they have a keen sense of smell.

The gator trapper put bait out and each day, the bait was gone, it took a few tries to get him because we underestimated how big he was and the gator kept slipping the hook. While I do understand that we are invading his natural habitat, unfortunately, I can't do a thing about all the construction and building going on down here.

My mother lives in Gainesville. She said one of the local DNR guys stated that if there is water, there is a gator in it, was one yesterday or will be one tomorrow. That's just the way it is.

Several years ago, a pro trainer I know was down in FLA (most of them go south for the winter). This trainer and several others had been working their dogs on a water blind. They had scouted the pond and had a sharp-shooter on hand. The first three dogs did the blind. This trainer's dog got half-way out, and got "gatored." They were helpless to stop it. The gator went into the death roll with the dog and it was all over.

MK

Yes Lucille there is no doubt that gators need to be respected as do all predators.Problem is that many people do not seem to totally understand how dangerous it can get and how they can help avoid these problems by using old fashioned common sense.
I once had a black bear come into our camp in the Maine wilderness and bounced the truck a bit trying to find food(we think).He did go away but it was a little tense for a few minutes
Up there as in many places these days, the bears find human food at the landfills/dumps so they learn to look for it and sometimes loose their fear of man.
We cannot control mother nature but we can sure try to learn how to work with it a bit more than modern society does now.

There is a reason the shark and alligator is at the top of the food chain. There is also a reason why these two creatures of Mother Nature have not changed their physical characterics in evolution. It is because they are created as perfect eating machines. Other predators will protect their young, gators will eat their young in order to survive.

The alligator was an endangered species in Florida several years ago, so the hunting season was shortened. Alligators prospered and multiplied in Florida during that time. At the same time, a lot of construction and new homes being built happened. So we now have an over-population of them. They have allowed alligator hunters to hunt more alligators and lengthened the hunting season for the past two years.

I have lived in the same house for 20 years, and never saw an alligator anywhere near my home until last year when developers flattened about 5 square miles of land that was behind my house.

While I agee "man" messed with the natural habitat, I also have to take care of myself and my dogs. Gators can climb fences, dig under them and go through them. My yard is double fenced, but that still would mean nothing to an alligator. Because of construction going on in the area, the alligators loose fear of man because construction workers typically throw their trash around and feed the gators inadvertently by not picking up after themselves. The gator that was in the retention pond had no fear of coming up on the banks of the retention pond. So if it is a question of me suriviving or him, I am going to protect my dogs and myself.

Can't blame you for that!

Not only shouldn't your daughter and neighbors throw food into the canal for the gators to eat, it's against the law.
Yep, I found that out when I lived on a canal in Plantation FL back in the 80's. We had gators - one tried to eat my 12 week old puppy and was saved by my Golden barking furiously on the edge of the dock. The fence across the back of the house went up the following week (we had just bought the place).
It got so bad with the gators that I called the State Wildlife Dept when I suspected they were BREEDING in the water (I was right about it too). The state sent out a person to catch a gator or 2 - this was before the controlled hunts they instituted.
It turns out that other families on the canal had been feeding them - we were told it was a $5000 fine to feed the gators.
Gators love small children and dogs - we had one trying to climb our chain link fence (seen pictures of that one too - from the St John's River area near Jax). I am so glad we relocated to CT!