Midnight with the Alligator

According to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Florida has a healthy and stable alligator population of about 1.3 million alligators. The mating season for our aquatic neighbors that do resemble dinosaurs is between April and June, and toward the end of the steamy season when alligators are most active and aggressive, almost anything can happen and sometimes does...

Our episode begins a few miles inland from Marco, where the many freshwater lakes and streams of our region embrace the modern golf course developments of Florida. As every Marco Beach Boy and Girl is well aware June, July and August are the jungle months. This is the summer season where every form of life ignores all boundaries in search of finding new ones.

When Alex decided to go fishing, it was midnight. The heat of late June and the steaming surroundings of his retirement community in the daylight hours was overwhelming, and because the wonderful winter season with the perfect weather had vanished with the summer rains, Alex decided to become a night owl angler.

When the lone retiree gained the little dock that stuck out in the stream, the night was alive with the chorus of nature. Every frog was busy chirping a symphony and the insects that were everywhere were a constant drone of ten thousand vibrating wings. After Alex began to bait his hook, and make his first cast, there was a primordial warning of a sudden splash in the darkness.

Sitting on the dock, with his bare feet in the water and fishing pole in hand, Alex felt a sense of relief from the heat. Midnight beside the golf course was peaceful amid nature, and even if the fishing was disappointing; there was a certain solace and solitude to a steamy night in the tropics.

This was almost Alex’s last thought. When the violence began, it was with the speed of lightning. One second, Alex was fishing on the dock with his feet in the water, and next he was underwater with a terrible and urgent pain in his legs that eliminated every thought but the breath he knew he must have, but could not, because he was in the grip of a nightmare that was pulling him underwater. Then the horrible rolling, twisting, and turning began which did allow the angler to find a breath of air before the big alligator pulled him down again. The relentless clamping jaws and the repeated and helpless struggle to gasp another breath was all encompassing until the attack eventually ended with an unconscious angler tucked away for later in a nearby alligator den.

When Alex awoke, he was in complete darkness. The pain from the bites on his legs brought him up into the living, but as he realized he was the victim of an aggressive alligator attack and was now waiting to be reptilian fast food, the muddy darkness that was everywhere was suddenly demanding action. Even though he could not see anything, Alex moved over a slippery and wet surface until he found deep water at the edge of the stream bank. Realizing that the water was the only way out of the little cave on the shore, it took him only a few moments before the refrain of frogs and insects was once again pulsing with the sounds of life. A crescent moon high in the sky was another reassurance, but as he waded painfully away from the watery entrance to the alligator den, the retiree that was the midnight angler suddenly knew he was very lucky to be alive.

After finding his way along the shore, and climbing out of the stream, another startling realization came in the form that nothing looked familiar. The little dock on which he was fishing before the attack was nowhere visible in the light from the moon. A quick inventory in the dim lighting was difficult and made even worse by the fact that the teeth wounds on his legs were still muddy.

In the distant moonlight, the distinctive double bark of another alligator or perhaps the same one prompted Alex away from the sound and down the streambank in the opposite direction. With the stream, and the attack hopefully behind him, the midnight angler saw in the distance the glow of an artificial light. After a few more minutes of painful walking, the single electrical light turned into several, and when the pulling tangle of the undergrowth was past, there was an illuminated golf cart track traveling away from the nearby stream.

With salvation almost hopefully at hand, and with his life apparently still ongoing, a slow hobble began down the lighted golf cart track. As the movement was slow and painful from the attack, Alex paused to rest on his feet before moving on. This was when he heard the very distinctive dry rattle and scrape behind him. As he turned automatically to the sound, there can be no description as to his feelings when in the distance and illuminated by the track lights he saw what he knew was the big bull alligator that attacked him. It knew of his escape. It was obvious. It was following to recover the missing meal. Alligator food was hard to come by.

Before Alex’s emotions could truly crash however, a lone security guard in a patrolling golf cart rounded a far curve on the track and found in the headlights a rough and tumble and tattered human facing a very large and advancing alligator.

When the guard in the golf cart made the rescue and Alex was safely aboard and speeding toward the golf clubhouse and the ambulance that the guard was calling from his phone, there was only one reoccurring thought before the tale of Midnight with an Alligator became an urban legend.

“This might be a hard story to believe, but there are other gator tales even more fantastic.”