The Slacker Gators of the Everglades

[tikistitch]

So, the laptop is refusing to grab all the 6 hundred jillion gator photos from Mr. Tiki's camera, so we'll write down a few quick impressions before it all oozes back out of our brain.

One speciality of the Tikis when we are on holiday - besides buying unneeded plush toys and going to conventions with people dressed as stormtroopers - is viewing wildlife that's lucky enough to still live in the wild. Not that we hate zoos, it's just, if you were, say, a jungle critter, you're probably prefer to live in a jungle than some jungle-esque environment a bunch of zookeepers created out of pasteboard.



So, 'twas on to the Everglades National Park. We started at Shark Valley, where we boarded the Gator tram (and, no, we're not quite sure why it's named after a shark when it's full of alligators), and then ventured through South Florida traffic to another corner of the park to go on a gator walk.





Now, Mr. Tiks and ourselves had been on suchlike tours before, and were well accustomed to such deflating comments from guides as, "If Animal X were actually here (which it's not, because it's not the season or the time of day, or it's shy, or we're just making this up), that on your right would look just like its burrow!!!"

But, as we'd actually espied a salt water croc whilst touring Australia (the daft Ozzie guide had in fact tried to ram a 9-foot sucker with our 7-foot tour boat, not a calming experience), we decided to take the chance, thinking maybe we'd be lucky to spy the flick of a slimy gator tail, or maybe the shine of a suspicious gator eye.



The tram was not two minutes out of the parking lot when everybody was like, "ZOMG GATOR!!!"



And then, more gators! Big ones! And baby ones!!



And, whole flocks of the darned things!!!



There were so many gators, by the end of the two-hour ride, everybody started to get a little jaded. "Ah, that one's not big enough to take a picture. And that one's not posing right!"

It was pretty easy to take pictures, as we found the beasties rarely moved. (Mr. Tiki got a couple of action videos, bue we haven't managed to download them yet.) They're pretty darned impressive when they start to move. They swim by undulating their tail, which makes them look pretty creepy and threatening. According to the tour guide lady, they've actually gotten a bit lazy in the park, as they've taken to lodging in some of the man-made ponds instead of being industrious and buidling their own gator condos. The ones we saw definitely looked well-fed.



And before we forget, there was a lot of other crazy wildlife on view, like tons of birds, turtles, ever-present mosquitoes...



...and tons of other weird critters.

One cool thing about being surrounded by so many birdwatchers, if you wanted to know the identity of some flying thing, all you had to do was say, "Hey, look at THAT weird bird," and a nearby nerd would set you straight with the genus, species, feeding habits and astrological sign of the bird in question.



We didn't see any panthers though. We actually drove up and down this stretch a couple times at sunset looking for kitties. Maybe next time!

Comments

[avalonjones.livejournal.com]

I saw a show on Animal Planet once that had footage of gators actually standing up, stretching their legs all the way up, and running. And man, can those things book when they want to-! (Not for very long or very far, but still.) You just gotta respect something that's been around for jillions of eons pretty much unchanged.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they can scoot pretty fast when they want to!! But Guide Lady said they can really only run short distances, so you'd probably be able to outrun one if you had a little head start. Unlike, say, Grizzly bears, which can get up to 35 mph, so you're kinda hosed. (Mr. Tiki wants to go bear watching some time, so this dliemma has been much upon my mind.)