You Won't Believe What Happened in Orlando Next ...

As shoes

 

Next up: Snakes on a monorail!

 

There may be some posts after this one but this takes the prize.

 

I think Disney does a good job of containing a lot of stories before they become national. They are in the unfortunate position this week of having the national media descend on Orlando.

 

Wouldn't this lake have been man made or at least man modified? Can you keep alligators out of this type of body of water?

 

It certainly helps to have your own "city" with your own police force, fire department and city council made up of Disney employees who could be booted out of they don't toe the company line.

 

It's a big lake (especially by Florida standards). No way they can keep them out. Can probably keep them from nesting near the hotels though.

 

I doubt very much its possible to keep alligators out of a body of fresh water that big in Florida.

I guess I must have but I don't remember going to a golf course in Florida at which I didn't see alligators. I'll rarely search for a ball near the water's edge or the tall grass there.

 

I'm starting to rethink my opinion that Maryland is the worst state in the U.S.

 

No, not really. Gators regularly move in search of new territory, especially during mating season (ie. spring) when the males are on the prowl. You can have a lake that's gator-free one day, wake up and find it gator-infested the next.

 

Just saw that as well, and the pictures they posted. One of the small signs in the photograph reads, "No swimming please." I didn't notice the sign while we were there, but I can understand if someone sees that and differentiates between swimming and wading. It's a fine line for the company between dissuading people from entering the water and scaring them by warning of alligators. I'd probably err on the side of warning about the danger of alligators.

The other photo, a tweet by a Twitter user, shows a larger white sign right on the sand. I definitely did not see that, but it's entirely possible I just missed it while keeping an eye on my 3-year-old. I'll have to look back at my photos and see if I have any of that spot.

 

My best friend from my hometown was, for a time, the head alligator control guy in South Carolina. When he wasn't doing paperwork, his primary job was to take care of alligators that: A) were in "private" bodies of water; and B) had made themselves known to property owners in the vicinity (by, say, snatching little poodles and the like). IIRC, if they were larger than 8 feet he either killed them or arranged for a licensed dealer to kill them (because alligators are a federally protected species, the volume of the associated paperwork was astounding). If they were small, he moved them into waters that were public but that were off the beaten path. The latter was absolutely a sisyphean task; he'd no sooner move one than another (or five) would pop up in the same territory. And sure enough, it wouldn't be long before the alligator he'd moved (he had to tag them) would reappear.

The Blue Jays' Justin Smoak is from a town a few miles inland from Charleston that has a little lake that is notorious for its alligators. I went with my friend one night when he was doing some survey or another, and he turned a high-powered flashlight over the water to show me. It looked just like this: