It donned on me this morning I hadn’t shared many pictures of these creatures from my excursion into the headwaters of the Florida Everglades a few weeks ago. Let’s fix that today.
This pretty lady was sunning herself on a small patch of high ground in the swamp. Our airboat captain did a fantastic job of putting me in a good position to get some nice, close up captures of her.
We saw at least a half dozen gators in the span of a couple of hours and was surprised at how, for the most part, they didn’t seem particularly bothered by us. In a way, that was a bit disconcerting as they are absolutely impressive. This one was a female so somewhat on the small size as she was “only” about 8 feet long or so. Males can be up to 15 feet long!
The American Alligator came under the protection of the Endangered Species Act in 1967. Twenty years later, it had recovered enough to be removed from the list and today they are quite numerous.
