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Najakcharmer -> RE: i am missing a cat (4/11/2007 10:25:47 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Devilslilsister
The alligator was found between Lake Istapoka and Pinedale estates... near a house , Game Wardens were forced to shoot the alligator- guess he wouldn't cooperate. Jayne and Don Hobkirk could hear the bellowing in the night. Their neighbors had been telling them that they had seen a mammoth alligator in the Lake that runs behind their house, but they dismissed the stories as being exaggerations. "I didn't believe it," Don Hobkirk said. Friday they realized the stories were, if anything, understated. Florida Game and Parks game wardens had to shoot the beast... Joe Goff, 6' 5" tall, a game warden with the Florida Game and Parks Commission, walks past the 23-foot, one inch alligator that he shot and killed in the back yard of Jayne & Don Hobkirk...
I thought Snopes might be helpful, and it was.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/gatordeer.asp This is not the same animal as in the prior photo. Totally different morphology. I guess all gators look alike to most people. LOL
As for this image:
http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j123/Riotgirl_photo/ShowwLetter.jpg
Click here: http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/wcgator.asp Looks like I was bang on with the locality and the length estimate. Gator populations have pretty distinctive head morphology, and it's not hard to eyeball gator length based on general body conformation. No idea where the crap in the email came from. Obviously somebody with no life made it up.
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Thanks for disproving (or not) the pics as i find it much more comforting to know that there are not gators that size running around here.
You're in Florida? That's theoretically where you'd see some of the largest due to climate and diet, but in practice you don't really see them much over 14'. Not that an extra foot matters if any adult crocodilian gets hold of you.
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Any chance you could tell me if its possible to save your own life if you ever get snagged by a gator? I've this theory that if a gator ends up grabbing my leg, that if i can reach up and pluck its eye balls out - out of pain, the gator will release me.
No, you're pretty well fucked in that situation.
You may be able to trigger the jaw opening reflex by tapping the nose repeatedly (too much force is not necessary here and is probably counterproductive), or a sideways snap by tapping the side of its mouth, or an aversion/backup response by rubbing the ear flap. Crocodilian eyes telescope down beneath hard scales when touched, so it's pretty pointless to muck around there with your hands. You will actually get better results with tantalizing little taps than with full on whacks. The gator is not going to be much impressed by any amount of force a human can generate, and you will trigger its jaw opening reflexes much more readily with the lighter and more rapidly repeated stimulus.
If someone can get a pole under the lower jaw to lift the head, you can back the animal up and keep it from moving forward. If you're the one in the gator jaws and there is no one around to help wrangle the gator, you are seriously fucked. If it was me I'd keep trying to trigger the jaw pop reflex by repeated light raps to the end of the nose, interspersed with just enough rubbing and tapping around the eyes to keep its eyes retracted in the down position. I would absolutely not touch or mess with the animal's body to avoid triggering the "death roll" reflex or the animal's whipping around with a chunk of me still in its jaws. That would be extremely bad news. Whatever limb an adult crocodilian is holding may not remain attached to you if it rolls.
But it would suck and you really don't want to be in this position. Fortunately you probably won't be unless you do something abysmally stupid. American alligators are pretty slow moving and they're not hard to avoid. Don't go swimming in places you can't see clearly, don't feed or tease wild alligators and you'll be fine. Most unpleasant human encounters with wild animals are entirely the human's fault and entirely avoidable with minimal common sense.
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