Gator Bites

One of my earliest memories in the mid-50s is of my father and some of the other young veterans at the University of Florida tossing meat to the gators living behind our housing on campus. A high wire fence separated our simple cottages from that gator pond. The feeding frenzy shocked me, and yet thrilled me at the same time.

My favorite gator memory is of Ol' Henry--a 12-footer--alone in his pen at what is now the Boyd Hill Nature Preserve not far from our home on Coquina Key in St. Pete, Florida. Again, feeding time was the attraction for me, and my mother would nearly weekly in the summer get us over to the park in time to watch Henry on his small island lift his head and catch his meal tossed to him by park workers. 

Because all the smaller gators were in a separate pen, I was convinced that Henry would have devoured any of his cousins were he given the opportunity. 

I remember gawking at gators on the shore of Lake Maggiore in St. Pete when we drove by. I had a hard time understanding a gator lake also being a waterskiing lake. Did those folks not know what they shared the water with out there? 

Fresh water. Gators. Florida. Pretty simple fact of life even for a kid. 

What I didn't do as a kid in Florida was eat gator meat. No, that experience would await me in my mid-20s in Louisiana. Of course, in Louisiana. 

Down there, oysters, fried or raw, even baked. Check. Crawfish, boiled or the tails fried or cooked in an etoufee or gumbo. Check. Yep, I stuck my finger into their heads and sucked out the juicy goodness. Yep, I sucked the heads. 

Happened to date a game warden's daughter for a bit, which added fried rattlesnake and--ta dum--fried gator bites to my menu. Of course, you might want me to step back to the rattlesnake nuggets. Trust me, all good. The gator tail meat was firm and clean and tasty. And, no, chicken did not come to mind in either case.

My funniest memories of gators in Louisiana were when LSU coeds would be sunning themselves on sorority row by University Lake and gators would propel themselves out of the water in that oh-so-explosive way they can. Hilarity ensued. 

I will confess to testing the young ladies' nerves at time by tossing rocks at some of the cypress trees nearby so we could watch the snakes drop off the branches into the water below. Often cottonmouth moccasins. Good times.

My first experience with gators here in South Carolina--secondhand--came when a young man who worked for my first landlord in Charleston showed up without his dog to do some chores. I asked about the dog. Gator got him. No details necessary. 

That is a thing about gators. If they get a hold of their target and get back in the water, c'est fini most likely.

Most of my time was spent on saltwater, so I saw few gators.

But I did send along a photo of a 700 lb gator pulled from Lake Marion to a young colleague from far off. Why? Because she was going tubing for the first time on said lake. 

Like I said, good times.