One summer afternoon in Gainesville....
 

we get a call that 2 hikers have gone a mile and a half out into Paynes Prarie state park and are cut off by a large alligator next to the path that is making menacing sounds when they try to pass. The path is only one car wide and there is no way back because the overlook is 1.5 miles out in the prarie, which is actually a swampy area, filled with LOTS of gators and cotton mouth mocassins, etc. So I get down there with a couple of Alachua County Deputies and the helicopter.

so the chopper says they dont see the gator, the hikers insist it is there and will not come towards where we are.....
then they are proven correct.......

so the chopper flies low and spooks the gator back down in the water so we can get to the hiker, That is me in the blue uniform with the pistol, my trusty glock model 21 in potent 45 cal. form....

and ultimately all is safe and secure, the citizenry of our fair community is safe......

Gator
 

That young man would have been a mere appetizer for that Gator!

I think I'd have taken the taken the 870 with slugs instead of the .45 Glock!

Well the hiker was wearing the right shirt.

I used to carry firecrackers in my glovebox. They worked well. :)

I fixed your pics Bret...they were HUGE.

I was thinking that as well.....how Ironic is that?!?



I wouldn't have even thought about hiking somewhere like that without carrying!



One thing I hate is snakes....only good one is a dead one! I'll worry about if it was harmful or not AFTER it is dead......last week I went to move a tire and when I picked it up I noticed a LARGE snake coiled up in the water in the bottom of the tire....set it down and backed off. Retreived my Glock 19 from the car and Jason moved the tire over to the grass slowly. The first shot went through the sidewall and nearly took his head clean off ...the other 2 shots were just to make sure it was dead :D Good thing it was an old tire I didn't want because it no longer holds air....

Turned out to be a chicken snake but it was about 4' long or a little more and they can still bite and give a nasty infection....but like I said, snakes around me just become a statistic!

Well since we're posting wildlife pics. I found this in my attic on Tuesday. Not a gator but UGLY nonetheless.

:ninja: The mystery discovered. Glad you got that thing outta there.

With a face only a mother could love. HA!

HA! That reminds me of one I found....I had some old Mustangs out in the woods YEARS ago at my fathers house and lifted up the hood on a '66 Mustang coupe and there was a Possum and it hissed at me....shocked me so I dropped the hood(not attached to hinges) Right on his HEAD!....came back a little while later and he was gone....probably with a pretty good headache!


I've also had the rabies vaccine treatment due to contact with a Racoon years ago that climbed into my garage and wouldn't leave....it ended up being rabid. Interesting side note, once you have that treatment you are permanently immune to rabies....although you can get a 10 year booster if you like...veterinarians do.

There was another
 

Well, yesterday Marcos (jarhed) and I spent the better part of the evening looking for a stench that was filling my closet. After cutting several holes in my walls and ceiling we found the source. I guess the opossum I trapped had a sibling and somehow it croaked in the ceiling above my closet. Marcos removed the rotting corpse into my waiting trash bag and the stench quickly subsided. I cannot describe what a rotting opossum smells like but suffice to say I don't ever want to smell anything like that again.:puke:Hopefully they weren't triplets.

My possum story.

A few years we were getting ready to go to a swap meet. I went to my dad's shop to grab a cooler. A possum was moving around there, I didn't have time to mess with it and figured our dog would take care of it. When we got back that evening I went looking for it. Didn't find it until a few days later dead. Other than squirrels no animal makes it out of our yard alive. She will get them occasionally. Here a pic of our doberman with my 1 year old nephew.

Well I'm glad that smell and dead animal is out of our hair.

That possum looks like an old man I used to work with at a local iron foundry here in Lufkin.