Will they remove the BCV "can-alligator"

[Mich Mouse]

Very interesting, Jim..

My favorite thread ever on the DIS was about the gators...I had it bookmarked but lost it in a crash....Everyone had posted photos of wildlife at WDW.

 

[Deb & Bill]

We saw the alligator this morning as we left to go to Typhoon Lagoon. He was floating in the canal, not too far from the walkway to the parking lot.

 

[5forDiz]

The basic answer is that "relocation" depends on the species.

Very few wild animals relocate well. Alligators were once endangered, but now they are rather abundant, so they just kill them........

Very sad Jim, I'd guess alligators, etc. are turning up more where us 'human animals' are because of more property being developed, etc both at WDW and throughout Florida ?

 

[MsAmerica]

This is a new gator. There was a gator lounging around the canal when the BCV's first opened and it was removed a few years ago.

Wasn't the first one called "Allie" affectionately?

As for why Disney doesn't have a sign saying "Don't feed the Alligator's", I would imagine it would be for liability issues. If Disney acknowledges that they have an alligator in the canal then there would be a liability issue if someone was injured. By ignoring the fact it exists, they won't have to accept responsibility for it if someone is hurt. I imagine it would fall under an act of nature then.....

PS. I am not a lawyer so don't hold me to that explaination.

MsA

 

[wulfekamp]

Even the birds can get nasty at WDW. I saw some poor guy buy a large fry at that place close to splash mountain. The birds attacked him until he dropped his fry's. Then they dove in and ate them.

 

[missy2217]

I am terrified even thinking of gators but this makes me very sad. Why can't people just use common sense and leave wildlife alone?
I'm glad that fisherman survived.

Common sense isn't so common.

 

[d-r]

"relocated" to some belts and baskets of fried appetizers.

That canal is a fire break canal and it goes a long way - the canal that splits the epcot parking lot is the same canal, fwiw.

 

[AllyBri]

He-she was still at the BCV last night. (friday)

 

[JimMIA]

Even the birds can get nasty at WDW. I saw some poor guy buy a large fry at that place close to splash mountain. The birds attacked him until he dropped his fry's. Then they dove in and ate them.

ANY wildlife that's fed can get like that. If the birds looked like small crows or were dark/light brown, they were probably grackles (the midnight blue ones who look black are the males and the brown/brown ones are females) and they can be very aggressive. The dive-bombing behavior you saw is typical of grackles.

In the Everglades, I've seen grackles take potato chips out of visitors' mouths!

 

[rutgers1]

The safari at Six Flags in New Jersey is nuts. We too saw people feeding the animals anything and everything that they could find in their cars. The facility is very clear with stating that you cannot feed the animals, but people don't care. It is sad.

I tend to be optimistic about people, but I am now convinced that your average person has a set of rules that he or she professes to live by, and that same person has a very large "gray" area where he or she will bend those rules to a great degree. Unfortunately, when you bring a mass of humanity together at a place like Disney or Six Flags, you see more people dabbling in that "gray area" than normal.

A major reason (aside from concentration of people) that you see guests bending the rules at Disney is that people on a Disney vacation tend to feel that they "deserve" special treatment. Everyone's expectations for EVERYTHING are higher at Disney. There is a total feeling of entitlement. Most people go with the flow and do the right thing, but even if 1% do not, that is a LOT of people.

 

[safetymom]

If they are small they are relocated. Once they get to 5 feet or so they are killed.

 

[JimMIA]

If they are small they are relocated. Once they get to 5 feet or so they are killed.

From everything I've read about Disney's policy, they leave them alone until the animals are about 5-6 feet long. I haven't asked any trappers, but they may not want to capture any alligators less than 5 feet because they can't get enough money for the hides and meat.

A 6-foot alligator, incidentally, is still a juvenile. Alligator maturity is determined by size, not age, and they don't reach maturity until about 7 feet.

 

[Mississippian]

Disney needs to remove these when they first show up and not allow the idiots to do this!

Exactly right! Alligators of any size are not safe to have around children.

 

[Kurby]

I never can figure out why people have to feed the duck, birds and other "wild" animal around. This is not a helpful thing for the animals. Some have said Disney should have duck and bird CM's to keep them away from the people and pools. People just stop feeding them and they will go away.

because apparently a photo op is more important to them. we were on a 4 night dcl last month and while we were eating at the back of deck 9 2 families were placing food on the railing not far from us so they could get the perfect photo of the nasty sea gulls in flight.

that was until i had a few choice words for them and knocked the food off the railing.

i'd prefer to eat my meal outside without the fear of a bird crapping on us or our food.

 

[irunnoft]

Here's a cut and paste of a story about what can happen when people feed gators. This is a true story and it happened to my grandfather. It's actually in a book about Pompano Beach and Early FL settlers that we have, but I found a copy of the story online. Here's the link to this story and to other early Florida settler stories.

http://home.earthlink.net/~pb60/pompano/oldpompano.html#gatormcnab

Here's the story. BTW, the bridge tender is the one who had been feeding (whether intentional or not, we still don't know) the alligator.

The day the Gator got Jimmy McNab

Sometime in late summer in the year 1925, 14 year old Jimmie McNab, his brother Robert, age 12 and their friend Everette Green having been born and raised in Pompano and having just returned from a vacation in Colorado were on their way to the beach in Pompano to go swimming. Jimmy had been cautioned by his mother not to swim in the East Coast canal (Intracoastal Waterway) as he and others had done in the past. It was a dangerous place to swim with the thick mangroves and shrubs bordering the canal and the water being murkey most of the time.

The bridgetender had seen and shot at a large gator on several occasions at the bridge on the "beach road" (now Atlantic Boulevard). It would come in to eat the chicken and other scraps the tender threw into the water. This was not known to Jimmy and Robert because they had been out of the state for some time. Arriving at the bridge they went to their favorite "swimming hole" and donned their swim trunks. All three were good swimmers and had been practicing underwater swimming.

They agreed to dive off the pilings together and swim underwater to the other side, about 30 feet away. The water was about 7 feet deep where they entered. They all dove together and started across. Jimmy had just opened his eyes under water and spotted many bubbles in front of him. Before he could react a large alligator was coming towards him and closed its massive jaws over his head and tried to swallow him, at the same time rising to the surface of the water and making a tremendous splashing with his tail.

Jimmy, being of slight build, weighing only about 75 pounds was desperately fighting with his hands, trying to free his head from the jaws of the gator. For some unknown reason, possible from Jimmy getting his finger in the eye of the gator he released his hold on him and Jimmy made it to the surface and yelled to his brother and friend he was being attacked by an alligator.

At that moment the gator's tremendous jaws again grabbed Jimmy by the head and pulled him to the bottom of the canal and "rolled" him several times churning and splashing the water with his tail. Jimmy was fighting the gator with his hands and again the gator opened his jaws and he was able to get away, taking a few strokes toward the bank of the canal and trying to get out of the water. At the waters edge the gator came after him again, arched his back, slashing his huge tail, striking Jimmy on his left shoulder, turned and snapped its huge jaws biting him on his left shoulder.

By this time his brother Robert and Everette were out of the water and at the edge of the bank scared, but trying to help him. Everette hit the gator with a board he had found and this distracted the gator long enough for Jimmy to get out of the water. The gator continued to swim around in the water at the banks edge, which was red with Jimmy's blood.

Jimmy's hands and fingers were lacerated and torn from the teeth and jaws of the gator where he had tried to pry the massive jaws from his head, and he was bleeding heavily. There were teeth wounds, lacerations and bruises on his neck and head. His left shoulder was torn open and bleeding, much of this damage caused by the gators'tail.

Jimmy's Mother had told the boys not to go swimming in the canal. They had slipped out of the house planning on going to the beach and stopped at the canal deciding to swim there anyway. She missed the boys and had a premonition they would be swimming in the canal. She got into her car and drove to the East Coast Canal just in time to see Jimmy being helped up the bank and onto the bridge. She helped get Jimmy, who she said later "was bleeding like a stuck hog", into the back seat of the car, found an old robe in the car and covered him up. Jimmy's father and uncle, Harry McNab were working on the Pompano Hotel just West of the canal and Mrs. McNab stopped and called for them to get in the car and get Jimmy to the hospital. Jimmy was taken to a small hospital in Ft Lauderdale where he was admitted and after a considerable time, he recuperated and returned home. Some of the effects suffered by Jimmy from this attack by the ten-foot alligator happened about a year after the attack when the wound on his left shoulder swelled-up and had to be lanced and drained every three or four months.

The same afternoon after Jimmy's desperate and heroic battle for his life, the bridgetender shot and killed the 10 foot long gator. The gator was draped on the fender of a car and he streched from the front fender to the back fender. Jimmy carried a picture of this gator in his wallet for many years after this experience until his wallet, with the picture in it was stolen from his home during a break-in.

Jimmy McNab carried the scars on his left shoulder, head and hands, including a large depression across his shoulders until his death in December, 1993 proving he, at the age of 14 years old met and defeated a savage alligator in deadly combat in the gators home territory. Jimmy McNab had some understandable side effects from this encounter. His wife, Mildred said he wouldn't go near the East Coast Canal for some time and his dad sent him to school at the "Citadel", a military school in South Carolina for a year or so to help him get over it. Very few people of any age ever escape from a full grown alligator when caught in the water. Jimmy McNab, fourteen years old, 75 pounds met one, fought him off barehanded and lived to tell about it. Jimmy McNab was a real hero.