April/May is the season to be careful. Stay away from small gators, mom is usually around! usually the gator is more afraid of you then you are of them. I sometimes paddle a canoe trail in the Everglades and the larger access canal is loaded with big gators. You'll hear a splash every 20 or 30 yards as you paddle by. It's not uncommon to see two or three ahead of you in the water, but they usually submerge. A kayak is bigger than anything they can put in their mouth. All the above applies to gators that have NOT been fed. As for charging, never seen it happen. Make sure your roll is bombproof! Another point always to keep in the back of your mind; a gator can jump straight out of the water 1/2 it's body length. I've never seen it myself, but did see it on video and it's common at the parks. Once on the Loxahatchee reserve trail, I was paddling around a corner and a baby gator, about 8" long jumped off a stick it was sunning on, on to my deck. I deftly swept it into the water and I was out of there in a hurry! cya *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Jul 18 2000 - 08:32:58 PDT
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