Casa Flamingo's Little Gator

Almost every person who visits our house for the first time looks at the tidal creek beside our house and asks if we have alligators. My standard answer is, "We do, but they're pretty small. The creek is brackish (part salt water, part fresh), so I think the young alligators move on to fresh water to find mates before they get too big."

Keep in mind, please, that I have a tendency to sound like I know what I'm talking about when I have no clue. I am an attorney after all. I have no idea whether or not big alligators dislike brackish water -- I'm just basing my incredibly scientific-sounding-Wild-Kingdom explanation on what I've observed in this creek by our house, and for some reason I don't want people to be afraid to come to our house, where the water (that might be filled with huge man-eating gators) is only 8 feet from where they park their cars.

You should also keep in mind that other than a small alligator that Chance cornered in our back yard a couple of years ago, I've never seen more than this of an alligator in our creek:

And usually I only see this:



Unfortunately, however, I feel the need to formally retract all previous statements regarding the size, girth, and breeding patterns of alligators, because today I saw the rest of that "small" alligator in the photo above, and here he is:



Isn't it time for him/her to be moving on to fresher water for a mate? Go on little fella/little lady -- romance awaits you in a nice freshwater pond two or three streets away from here!

On a somewhat, but not altogether, unrelated note -- does it bother anyone else that Bindi, the Jungle Girl, keeps doing shows with her dead father? At what age will the Discovery Channel let that poor girl move on, for crying out loud? How long can they keep mixing new footage of her with old footage of the Crocodile Hunter? Isn't someone just plain taking advantage of the child at some point?