Beach_Bound9 said:
It was strange that right next to the pool and the sidewalk to the busses was a wild aligator. Used to see people feeding it, despite the $500 Florida fine. Always wondered if it could be asleep in the bushes along the sidewalk when one didn't see it in the water. I wonder what prevents it from climbing the banks of the canal as it gets increasingly comfortable and unknowledgable and unknowing guests feed it from the bridge.
I do volunteer work at Everglades National Park and walk within a few feet of large alligators (we consider any alligator bigger than 10 feet "large") on a regular basis. We also have to move them out of paths and roadways occasionally. We know what we are doing and we do it safely - both for us and for the animal. Frequent human contact is not a problem. We have hundreds of thousands of visitors close to alligators every year without any incidents.
However, alligators who are fed (a
profoundly stupid thing to do), can be dangerous. Feeding alligators (or any wild animal) has only one outcome - "A fed animal is a dead animal."
If the human food doesn't kill them, they become pests and have to be destroyed. Alligators are rarely moved successfully. Sometimes they return and repeat the behavior which got them moved, and they get destroyed. Usually, moving them puts them in a strange habitat, in competition with other animals, and they end up getting killed. There is no size requirement, but if in fact Disney was going to move an alligator, they may have waited past the April-May mating period to give the animal a better chance of survival.
In the wild, alligators are generally placid, docile creatures -- unless you are swimming in their habitat, in which case they see you as food. If you come in contact with an alligator
at Disney, however, I'd give it a wide berth. It's undoubtedly been fed, and therefore I would consider it dangerous. Alligators are MUCH faster than humans on land, and even a little four-footer can spoil your day.
