Any good Alligator or Croc stories?

TemplarKnight21c said:
Alligators are freshwater critters.
Click to expand...

Si, Senor, but down in Central America in some transition areas (from freshwater to saltwater), gators swim into saltwater lagoons looking for vittles and often stay for relatively long periods of time. Hence, the locals call them Saltwater Gators. This was most definitely an alligator with the wide snout, and it was most definitely saltwater.

They don't hang out in the open ocean, although on very rare occasiuons some have been spotted there.
 
Watchful said:
Something dark and dim stirs in my memory, and I'm not sure if it's true...but I seem to recall being told that a gator can move as fast on land as a person can jump, dash, or leap. However, they can't change directions as rapidly as a person, so jumping to the side and then running for cover is a better bet.

I also do not know how long a gator can sustain a forward motion.
Click to expand...

It was moving fast enough:D That was what prompted my rather rapid retreat...:D:D
 
Tasselhoff said:
I was 14 and had gone fishing with my best friend. We lived in southern miss. so gators were part of everydy life. any way we go down this narrow canal (30 feet wide). We are in a small john boat with a 1 1/2 hp engine. All of a sudden my friend freaks out claiming he saw a huge huge gator. I laugh at him, make of him the normal stuff. We turn around to get out of the canal and a little baby gator charges the boat. I reach down and pick it up and throw at my friend laughing about his HUGE gator. About that time a 9 foot monster launches off the bank to our right and hits the water right in front of us. Scared me to death. thing was Godzilla and was seemed 4 feet away. My friend quickly beeches the boat - I jump out and run - leaving him swaying in the back of the boat in the middle of the canal with monster gator. We eventually made it back- no one believed us until 3 weeks later when trappers had to move it out of a nearby pool house.

There is also the story about the cajun that threw a 3 foot gator into our boat- but that's for another time.
Click to expand...

I think it's time for the other story....
 
I have a few gator events...I was fishing in the Kissimmee lake chains, I want to say Lake Keenensville or something similar, but we were tearing up the bream and shellcracker with 6lb. tackle. Gators were everywhere but not a bit aggressive, more curious than anything else. We would throw a small fish near the 4 ft. gator near the bank and he would catch it right at the last minute before the fish would hit the water...amazingly fast! I continued fishing and had a nice bream on the line, with the line zigging and zagging in the water when the next thing I know, the line quits moving. I knew as soon as it happened that I didn't get wrapped around a stump. A gator had eaten my fish while it was on my line. I pulled up a nice 6 footer and had him on the line up next to the boat for a while...once I pulled his snout above water he thrashed and broke my line.

One other time, while fishing in the bay at Panama City, FL, my father-in-law was waist deep mullet fishing with a cast-net and saw a log move right beside him...we got the boat and finally found about a 6 footer in the bay where we have wade fished for years...something about being in a 13 ft. boat in 4 ft. of water with a 6 ft. gator nearby...
 
A small group of us was out water skiing when we noticed a small gator sunning itself on a log. We had this little cajun guy with - honestly couldn't understand a word he muttered- but he cut the engine and drifted towards the gator. I thought he was just trying to get close. No, No he took a paddle reached out and flipped that thing into the boat. Now it was just a small 15 ft ski boat with three 16 year olds in it. That gator was ticked at having his nap disturbed and started biting everything in sight. Little gators are quick. I snatched up a paddle and it the cajun on the back. I figured he put it in the boat he could get it out. Sure enough ,as the gator was wheeling around to take one of my toes he reached down grabbed it and threw it over the side. We did not invite him to go skiing with us again- actually I don't think he even went camping with us anymore. That little dude was nuts and even if he tried to tell you what he was going to do- you couldn't understand his thick accent.
 
Brian Jones said:
Si, Senor, but down in Central America in some transition areas (from freshwater to saltwater), gators swim into saltwater lagoons looking for vittles and often stay for relatively long periods of time. Hence, the locals call them Saltwater Gators. This was most definitely an alligator with the wide snout, and it was most definitely saltwater.

They don't hang out in the open ocean, although on very rare occasiuons some have been spotted there.
Click to expand...

You just reminded me of that episode of Seaquest with the ginormous crocodile. Good times...
 
Tasselhoff said:
A small group of us was out water skiing when we noticed a small gator sunning itself on a log...
Click to expand...
Tasselhoff: AWESOME story! Holy cats! That's hysterical--because I wasn't one of the guys in the boat--but I have no idea what that guy was thinking.

Apparently, *he* was the devil!
 
I grew up in the swamps and sloughs of south Florida and more than once, wade fishing we'd have to give up a stinger of fish to a gator that was tugging on it while it was clipped to your belt. Only if it was over 5 or 6 feet though, any smaller and you'd just give it a couple of whacks with your axe handle. ;-) good times, good times
 
As a teenager in Ocean Springs, MS, I ran across a fresh clutch of Gator eggs down by our local lagoon. I fortunately realized what I had stumbled on. The mama Gator was probably about 10' long and no less than 30' away. Before I could make it to the road about 50 yards away she was on the bank where I had accidentally found her nest and running full tilt for me. Half way to me, she let up and hissed at me while whipping her head and tail back and forth. I was very lucky to say the least.
I also ran across many Water Moccasin in that area.
 
WolfTracker said:
Saltwater croc? We have those down here.
Click to expand...

Nope. Alligator. They are freshwater critters who learned to come into lagoons that are saltwater or travel out into saltwater in those river transition areas. They don't stick around and make it home, but they do hang out there down in Central America.They follow the food there. It's learned behavior.
 
Brian Jones said:
Nope. Alligator. They are freshwater critters who learned to come into lagoons that are saltwater or travel out into saltwater in those river transition areas. They don't stick around and make it home, but they do hang out there down in Central America.They follow the food there. It's learned behavior.
Click to expand...

It may be of interest to many.... Florida *does* have saltwater crocs. Not many, compared to fresh water gators, but they do exist.

Note the caption in the link's photo: like Brian Jones, will vomit up food to attract fish!
 
Way weird. All the stories I just told took place in Ocean Springs missisippi. When were you there?
 
mymindisamob said:
As a teenager in Ocean Springs, MS, I ran across a fresh clutch of Gator eggs down by our local lagoon. I fortunately realized what I had stumbled on. The mama Gator was probably about 10' long and no less than 30' away. Before I could make it to the road about 50 yards away she was on the bank where I had accidentally found her nest and running full tilt for me. Half way to me, she let up and hissed at me while whipping her head and tail back and forth. I was very lucky to say the least.
I also ran across many Water Moccasin in that area.
Click to expand...
I lived in Ocean Springs when I was a kid-like maybe 5 to 8 years old. The neighborhood or area was called "St, Andrews", IIRC. What a horrible place(but great fun for a kid!).
It was basically a peninsula with the ocean on the outside, and marsh all around. The road in would be underwater when the swamps flooded, and gar would swim between the cars in the slow moving traffic. We'd have snakes swimming through the yard, and I remember a car floating out of a driveway into the road, and someone going down our street in a flat-bottomed boat one time.
There were inlets with little piers you could fish off of, if you wanted to catch gar or carp for some reason, and my grandfather got a small gator on the line long enough to pull its head up enough to look at it-and on my little brother's kiddie reel after breaking his line and mine.
I guess the neighborhood was what you'd call lower middle class, but had a golf course, and a little lighthouse. You didn't go after balls in the water traps, because some of them had alligators in them, and I was always afraid one would get in my dog's pen and eat him.
I've never seen a place with so many water moccasins. For a kid crawling around playing in the brush and riding a bike all over the place, running into them was a daily thing.
I know the flooding and stuff were exceptions, not something that happened all the time, but looking back, I still can't imagine actually buying a house there. What were my parents thinking:confused:
We were there during hurricane Frederic, but I seem to remember my dad telling me our old neighborhood got wiped out by a later one...
 
Oh yeah! I feel sorry for most kids these days. Seems like most of their childhood memories are going to be of getting shuffled back and forth between mommy and daddy's (separate) place, and what video games they play when they get there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top