This is in the waterway of a miniature golfcourse in the florida panhandle.  we did not want to play golf so we played on the fake animals.  i was lucky not to fall in.

I caught this gator with my BARE HANDS!!! I was on an air boat with my research advisor from the summer.  we were  just testing out the airboat to see if it worked, so we didn't really have any intentions of catching gators that night.  but then travis stopped the boat.  he said, there is a baby gator in front of it.  i am going to move up closer, and you reach over the edge of the boat and grab it.  i said, OK. since we didn't have any marking or bleeding tools with us, we had to take him back.  i had to hold him the whole way back to the dock.

I went out catching gators one other night with travis and susan.  i don't have pictures from that night.  we caught two gators.  one of them tried very hard to get away from us and took us on a marathon paddle around the pond.  i thought my arms would fall off, but we finally caught him.  at the end we were chasing a huge one, but we did not have the right equipment to get him, so he got away. that nite i also sexed an alligator.  i'm glad there are no pictures of that.

my first experience with gators was releasing one that guys from the herp lab had caught.  it was cool.  we also found a gator nest that day.

GATORS!!!   HOME