Any good Alligator or Croc stories?

[mymindisamob]

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
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...

Cool, cool! I remember the area of St. Andrew. I lived out in Gulf Park Estates during the time of my story. We would flood and as it receded, all the snakes would be up in our yards. I just remembered the Gator down at the marina too. They named him "Sweet tooth" because he'd eat marshmallows if you threw them to him. He ate a lot of ducks and small dogs as well.
BTW, I was there for Hurricane Helena, it took quite a few homes and businesses down to the foundations.

 

[Tasselhoff]

i lived there during elena too. Actually grew up there in the 80-90's. I have tons of gator stories and moc stories. We lived out on Ft bayou, went skiing all the time. We would also spend weekends camping as far up the bayou as possible. (vancleave area). Did either of you know the set, Dr. hastings? He had some crazy stories about gators attacking dogs.

 

[OwenM]

I don't remember much of anything about the area, outside of my own neighborhood. Really not sure on the ages, I was 6-8, or maybe 7-9, years old when we lived there? Have to ask my parents.
It really is a small world, though, isn't it?

 

[Houndstooth]

The setup for my gator story.

I used to work with a guy who thought he was an expert on everything. One night, I was telling him that on a recent fishing trip, I had caught a corn snake. My uncle wanted to use the snake to scare his daughter. Before I could finish telling the story, he began telling me how he hunts and catches rattlesnakes. In fact, he told me that he caught two the previous morning and had them in a box in his trunk. Knowing this guy I figured it was BS, but he insisted it was true. When we got off duty that morning, I told him I wanted to see the snakes. He told me “They’re dangerous, not like the ones you see in the zoo.” To which I said “I don’t want to pet them, I just want to see them.” So we walked out to his car and stopped at his trunk. He started looking stupid and said “I. I. I really don’t have any snakes in my trunk.” Then I said. “I know. I just wanted to know how far you were willing to go with this story.”

Now for the gator story.

A couple of months later, my family is on a camping/Disney vacation in Orlando. Around the campground are signs that say “No Swimming, Alligators”, “Do Not Leave Pets Tied Outside, Alligators”… When I asked the girl in the office if they really had alligators, she said “Yes. We have at least three alligators.” Sure enough, I see two 6’ alligators while riding around the campground. Then on the last day, as we were leaving, I see an alligator sunning in the grass. Now this gator is about 18 inches long. My 6 year old daughter and I get out of the truck and walk to within 2 feet of the baby gator. I looked back at my wife and tell her that I’m going to grab the gator and throw it the back of the truck. I planned to take the baby gator back home and strike up a conversation with my co-worker. “Oh, I go alligator hunting all the time. In fact, I got one in the back of my truck right now… but, my wife said “Leave it alone. It will bite your fingers off.” I said it was too small. Then she said “It’s illegal.” I think “Crap, she’s probably right.” So I left that little alligator alone, but I had to listen to my co-workers BS stories for years. Sometimes I think it would have been worth the risk to have caught that little gator.