First is was Samuel Jackson in "Snakes On A Plane
Now he'll be there with Alligators in the BackYard.
We got m###erf#$kin Alligators in the Backyard!!!! 
Where's my Light Sabre? (oops, wrong movie)
Posted on 05/16/2006 12:06:05 PM PDT by dukeman
Manatee woman shoots gator as fatal assaults leave state shook up
EAST MANATEE -- An unprecedented surge in fatal alligator attacks has created a stir among Floridians, including a local woman who used a handgun to fend off a gator.
When a 3-foot alligator came onto Candy Frey's lanai Saturday and attacked her golden retriever, the East Manatee woman grabbed her pistol.
Frey and her daughter managed to push the alligator through a dog-door on their lanai, then Frey shot the reptile four times.
"I was running on so much adrenaline," recalled Frey, 48, a former U.S. Marine aviation technician who has lived in the Panther Ridge subdivision for four years. "I just freaked out and shot him -- boom, boom, boom, boom."
Frey said she was thinking about recent gator attacks when she got her gun.
"People are shook up," said Todd Hardwick, a trapper who captured a 9-foot, 4-inch alligator Monday in a residential lake north of Miami. "It's like the citizens of Florida have declared war on alligators. People are really going crazy."
Last week, a 74-year-old woman in Punta Gorda fended off an alligator with a garden hose after it bit her ankle. The alligator scurried off.
In the latest fatal cases, one victim was a jogger whose body was found in a Broward County canal; one was snorkeling in a recreation area near Lake George, in the central part of the state; another was found in a canal about 20 miles north of St. Petersburg. All three were women.
"These are unfortunate, unrelated coincidences," Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Willie Puz said.
Although such a concentration of deaths -- all in a week's time -- had never been recorded in Florida, wildlife officials say there is no pattern or common element between them.
Only 17 deaths had been recorded since 1948 before the most recent fatal attacks, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Government researchers estimate there are between 1 million and 2 million alligators in Florida, but there have only been 351 recorded attacks on humans in the past 58 years.
Those gators that are 6-foot or larger are most likely to attack a person; alligators can reach 14 feet in length and weigh 1,000 pounds.
"We still caution everyone: Pay attention to your surroundings. Pay attention to what's in the water. Alligators are predators and wild animals that should be treated with respect," Puz said.
The three fatal attacks have come during the peak of alligator mating season, when the animals are moving around in search of mates.
In populous south and southwest Florida, lack of rainfall has dried up some shallow wetlands, forcing more alligators to find new homes. And rising spring temperatures make the cold-blooded creatures more active in their search for food.
Alligator encounters with humans also could increase as more and more natural habitat is lost to development. "We are building more and more into wild territories," Puz said.
Frey said Monday she's seen an alligator once before in the 15-acre lake behind her home in Panther Ridge.
A metal fence with bars surrounds her property. She said she thought the fence's height and metal bars would be alligator-proof.
But at about 5:45 p.m. Saturday, Frey was in the front of her house when she heard her two golden retrievers, Sammy and Annie, frantically barking.
"The dogs were going nuts," she said.
Sammy was bleeding from his head when Frey walked onto her lanai.
"I have to take this guy out," Frey recalled thinking. "You can't wait to see how long it's going to sit there."
She loaded a 10-round magazine into her pistol and marched back outside. Frey had tried flipping the gator away with a shovel but the reptile kept lunging at her.
Gripping the gun with two hands, Frey squeezed the trigger four times. The shots hit their mark -- two in the alligator's neck and two in its shoulder.
The gator barely bled, she said.
A neighbor called 911 and a Manatee County sheriff's deputy responded to Frey's home in 8100 block of Panther Ridge Trail.
The state sent a wildlife officer to investigate.
Frey said the gunshot wounds appeared to self-heal and the wildlife officer put the gator back in the lake.
The officer questioned Frey about the shooting.
Frey thought she was going to jail, but ended up with a warning citation for hunting without a permit.
I'd have said the same thing, but did try it a few times. Pretty bland and just a little tough.
That's nothin. A couple of years back a guy in St. Petersburg shot a gator with a bow and arrow because it was threatening his kids in their own yard. The gator crawled back into the lake but his neighbor reported him. The police came and arrested him. I don't remember how the case was resolved but the fact that this guy was arrested is just unbelievable.
You mean they are self-obsessed, loud, and think they are the center of the universe?? ;-)
what about the cats?
I like cats, as long as they keep the rodents away. Lazy cats...alligator chow.
I saw a few decent-sized ones in some swampy areas and culverts, right in the middle of the built-up part of Kiawah Island, South Carolina. There's signs all over the island warning you to not feed them. To that, I simply say, "Durrrrrrr."
}:-)4
We live on a golf course. There are gators in lots of the water hazards and lakes.
I know of several dogs, large dogs, that have gone missing over the past years. They took a 10 ft 4 in gator out of the lake in front of us after it killed a dog (a boxer), and another neighbor lost a German Shepherd to a gator.
But if the gator doesn't kill an animal, they usually leave it alone. We had a smaller one (4-5 ft) come across our front lawn and find it's way through the gate and into our back yard. Animal Control wouldn't respond, they just said, give it time and it'll return to the lake...which it did.
Our dog goes on a run everyday with my husband, but she doesn't seem to want to go into the lakes...she prefers to swim in swimming pools, LOL.
Gators are nearly always no problem as long as you go your way and you let them go theirs. And never feed them like the visitors and new transplants seem to do.
How about build a moat for them along that az border and export some to the rio grande! "Sarc"
They don't come on land till the last second of your life... the short, sudden burst of speed they can generate is what does you in.
First is was Samuel Jackson in "Snakes On A Plane
Now he'll be there with Alligators in the BackYard.
We got m###erf#$kin Alligators in the Backyard!!!!
Where's my Light Sabre? (oops, wrong movie)
I was watching the show about the Florida Alligator snatchers who relocate gators where they don't belong and most of the trouble they have is from 'neighbors' who give them a hard time.
Hah!, I couldn't figure out what your pic was about. Finally dawned on me to google permit fish, never heard them called that. Learned something new, thanks.
I think that "Snakes" movie will become a cult classic for all the wrong reasons.
But he could use it to launch a whole new franchise.
"We got M*&^*(in ILLEGALS on the plane!" etc.
I'd have said the same thing, but did try it a few times. Pretty bland and just a little tough.
It's quite tasty with a little tabasco.
"Apparently gators, range indicated above in yellow, inhabit most of the Deep South, and even North Carolina clear up to the VA border."
At the far reaches of their range, the gators are smaller and more sluggish. Not many candidates for man-eater in NC as a result.
Alligator amnesty. Not unlike a Pali prisoner release program.
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