PUNTA GORDA, Fla.–With more than 1,000 people moving every day to Florida, where there are more than a million alligators, they should know to keep their distance. May and June are the key months for alligator mating season, says the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation and Commission (FWC).
While the courting season for alligators began in April, as the weather gets warmer, mating season gets underway, according to FWC.
There are an estimated 1.3 million alligators in the lakes, ponds, swamps and rivers of all of Florida’s 67 counties. And, with people migrating to the Sunshine State, many are looking to buy waterfront homes and participate in water-related activities such as boating and swimming. This combination can result in more frequent alligator interactions which have a great potential for conflict, FWC spokesperson Tammy Sapp told The Epoch Times in an email.
Residents statewide are finding it almost commonplace to run into the large amphibians, with reports of alligator sightings becoming less and less rare, as one couple in South Florida found out recently.
Karyn and Jamie Dobson were at home watching TV on the evening of April 27 when they heard a very loud noise that they had thought was a “car crash.”
“The crash was so big, like wicked,” Karyn Dobson told a local television news outlet.
Jamie Dobson, a Chicago native, said when he opened the door leading to their garage, he saw something he was not prepared for.
“I open the garage door about a quarter way, peek my head in, and there’s the alligator,” Jamie told reporters. “Very quickly closed the door [and said], ‘Karyn, we have an alligator in our garage,’ something that, coming from the Midwest, we really haven’t experienced before.”
The alligator appeared to have a taste for diet soda. The couple said it broke into a few cases of the beverage they were saving for an upcoming birthday celebration.
“There was Diet Coke spewing everywhere, because the gator was interested, tore open the box, had a few cans,” Karyn Dobson told reporters.
The couple called a local trapper who relocated the intruder, noting that they had no idea that something like that could wander into their open garage.
FWC recommends keeping garage doors closed.
“I had one that size under my car all night,” Green wrote. “I warned our neighbors. We just didn’t leave the house all night, and the next morning he was gone. We were new to the area at the time, I didn’t call the police, I called animal control. They didn’t seem to think it was a problem, so we stayed inside until he went away.”
While other commentators were concerned that more alligators in the state are being “displaced” because of loss of habitat. “Hopefully he/she was relocated ... we are taking away their habitat from them,” Robin Magleora wrote.
FWC was contacted and they, together with sheriff’s deputies, removed and relocated the large reptile.
On Easter Sunday—when an Easter bunny would have been a much more welcome sight—residents of Venice, Fla., were treated instead to the sight of a large alligator strolling around a residential neighborhood. Alarmed, they called law enforcement for help.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has a Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program, which monitors the number of alligators entering developed areas, and they will occasionally assist in removing and relocating them.
If there is a body of water nearby, it is more than likely there are alligators present, the FWC website said.
“Alligator biology, including courtship, mating, and nesting, is an interesting aspect of this animal, Sapp explained. “Only in rare circumstances are alligator mating and nesting associated with human/alligator conflict.”
Sapp said that when the weather in Florida is warm, residents and visitors should know that alligators are active and are advised to take “precautionary measures to “reduce conflicts with” the animals.
“Alligators are most active and visible when the weather is warm, and in some places in Florida, that can occur year-round,” she said.
FWC website maintains a list of incidents of people being bitten by alligators. It shows that from 1948 through 2021 there were 442 “unprovoked bites,” which FWC defines as “not provoked by handling or intentional harassment.” Of the 442 encounters, 303 were considered major, in which the victim’s injuries required medical care beyond first aid treatment. There were 139 minor bites that consist of a superficial wound and required no treatment or first aid only. However, in that time period, 26 were fatal attacks, most notably a 2-year-old boy who was killed while playing along the shoreline of Seven Seas Lagoon, a man-made lake in Orange County at the Disney World Resort, on June 14, 2016. The last fatality on record by FWC was in 2019 when a 31-year-old male was trying to escape from law enforcement by attempting to swim across a retention pond in Lee County on April 22, 2019. The alligator responsible was a 10-foot male.
FWC described female alligators as rarely exceeding 10 feet in length while males can grow much larger. The state record is 14 feet, found in Brevard County. The weight of an alligator varies but the state record for weight is 1,043 pounds (13 feet, 10 inches long) from Alachua County.
Sapp said all alligators attain sexual maturity by the time they are 7 feet in length, although females can reach maturity at 6 feet, which can sometimes take 10 to 15 years. Males reach maturity at 8 to 12 years.
FWC’s website describes alligator nests as consisting of soil, vegetation, or debris, where the female can lay an average of 32 to 46 eggs, beginning in late June or early July. The incubation period is usually 63 to 68 days and hatching occurs from mid-August through early September. However, about one-third of the nests are destroyed by predators such as raccoons or by natural events like flooding. From the eggs laid, it is estimated that only 24 hatchlings will emerge and only 10 will live for one year. Of those 10, only eight will become subadults (4 feet in length) and the number of subadults that reach maturity (6 feet) will be approximately five.
FWC recommends that people do not feed alligators and advises that it is illegal to do so.
“They will learn not to fear humans and will relate them to food,” Sapp cautioned. “Keep pets on a leash and away from the water.”
