Remember, the best defense against the alligator is CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
It looks like that constant vigilance is paying off--there are no new attacks to report this week, but clearly the struggle continues:
Plucky Floridian Benjamin Hodges got pinched for skinning a dead gator on his front lawn. Mr. Hodges claimed he found the gator, dead, thought it would make a swanky belt, and brought it home in a shopping cart. Do you think he lives in a gated community?
Like fire ants, killer bees and armadillos, alligators are headed north. Police in Long Island, NY, found a young gator sunning himself by a pond. Gators are willing to sacrifice their young as scouts, probing our defenses. Good job, New York law enforcement!
Alert cops in Shawnee County, Kansas, arrested Michael "Tiny" Hutson for releasing a young alligator into Lake Shawnee. Law enforcement needs to make an example of traitorous dupes like Mr. Hutson; lured by the promise of exotic pet ownership only to betray his own kind.
Here's a big problem: apologists in the pro-gator media. The bias is very subtle; for example, here's a story in the Daytona Beach News-Journal that purports to warn people about gator safety during mating season. Sounds reasonable, right? But just read down a little and you'll find an outrageous pro-gator statement like this:
"Sensational news reports don't tell the whole story," said Nick Clark, senior reptile keeper at the Central Florida Zoological Park in Sanford. "You're far more likely to be in a fatal auto accident on I-4 than attacked by an alligator."
See what I mean? Any experienced narcozoologist will tell you, "sensational news reports" may not tell "the whole story", but they certainly tell all the story you need to know.
Finally, a colleague of mine in south Florida sent me a link to a comment posted on the Hungry Hyaena blog. I'm impressed that someone out there feels more strongly about alligators than I do:
That is one committed American!
There can be no happy medium in the war against alligators. If they want war, they shall have it. Alligators were on the verge of extinction when we took measures to protect them allowing their numbers to swell and now they prey on our pets and occasionally kill humans. Our kindness was perceived as weakness by these reptiles.
I have no issue with alligators in the Everglades where they belong. We need them there to fight the boas, but when they encroach on residential areas they must be destroyed. And please spare me this foolishness about us encroaching on their habitat. Any place we have ever lived throughout the history of mankind has encroached on some animal. Animals can either learn to live with it or die at our hands.
Alligators have been the bullies of nature preying on the weak and sick for tens of thousands of years. Well this time they've met their match. Bring it on!