My First Experience with a Gator!
by: Pamela Price Svoboda
When I first moved to Florida I had no knowledge of Alligators what so ever. In fact the closest I had ever been to one was when I would go to the local Grill and get my weekly basket of gator tail. Well being young and newly married, we picked a nice little apartment that faced the back of a biggg pond and right on the other side of the apartment was a huge creek that ran straight to the bay.
One day I was sitting out on my cute little back porch just sipping on a nice cold glass of tea, with my feet propped up on the banister of the porch. The cool breeze was blowing and I was listening to the ducks quack in the yard and all was well. Each and every day the ducks would come to me once they noticed I was sitting and relaxing on the porch. I would toss bread to the ducks and watch them eat.
Well this particular afternoon my little duck friends came and decided to perch up on my neighbors back porch banister. They quacked and quacked while looking at me; as if they were saying...hey lady give us some more food. They had become my best buddies.
I was all relaxed, leaning back in my chair and taking in the sunshine. Occasionally I would reach over and hand my duck friends a few bites of bread. All at once......in the middle of all the summer silence, a Gator sprung up and jumped what must have been about 4 feet and grabbed one of the ducks that was perched on the ledge quacking to me.
Feathers were going everywhere and the ducks were screaming bloody murder! Being startled, I fell backwards in my chair and landed splat all over the porch floor with a glass of tea spilt all over me!
The noise of the ducks screaming and the bushes rustling scared me to death! I thought I would never get up from that porch floor fast enough either. You see, I was slipping and sliding all over the wet cement floor where I had spilt my glass of tea.... And let me tell you, my heart was beating a mile a minute. I could not believe what was happening right beside me!
My poor little duck friend had been grabbed and he was screaming....as the gator took him out of the bushes he was thrashing about from his mouth. It was only a few seconds when the gator tossed the duck slightly and his big mouth fully wrapped around the pretty duck and he was gone.
You see...unknown to me but an alligator had crawled up from the water and was lying under the shrubs in front of the neighbor’s porch.
The Horror of it all!
That was my first up close experience with an alligator.
I didn't even know there were alligators in the pond.
Well, I cried for the poor little duck and part of the tears were from being scared senseless. Once I collected myself and watched the gator crawl back to the water and slide in. I took myself inside the apartment and changed my pants.
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This article uses some material from Wikipedia/article alligator /and other related pages. Top Photo: homestead
