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Edi wrote:Then that's what you should have said in the first place instead of assuming people would telepathically pick up on what you really meant behind the face value of your previous quote.

Or he could have done the intelligent thing and made no assumptions at bloody all. When I say a certain collection of words I have said no more or no less than those exact words. Stick to them explicitly.

This here is your original quote, and its meaning in the context when it was uttered is far less clear than the second quite. It does not have the qualifiers the second one does and is in general very badly formulated.

If you thus open yourself up to attack by lampooning your unclear quote with a reducto ad absurdum, the problem was with your communication to begin with and the ridicule of the absurd argument is the easiest way to point it out.

And the problem with you people is that you are willing to make shit up and put things into my mouth in order to construct arguments that refute words I newer said. It's that simple.

If I provide no qualifiers in my text than you should ask for them. If you lack information than again ask for it. Do not make assumptions, jump to your own conclusions and in general make up your own interpretations of things I say. I am a human being and not the bloody bible. I do not speak in allegorical verse to be interpreted.

Get fucking used to the idea that words and phrases (such as "run something to the ground") have established meanings, and that if you use them outside of the direct context of their established meanings, it is your responsibility and obligation to provide the necessary clarity for your arguments instead of throwing a bitching fit about people's response to your nonstandard use of such phrases. The onus is on you to communicate clearly, just as it with everyone here. If you can't communicate clearly and understandably, then be fucking quiet.

In case you missed it, part of the byline of this site is "mockery of stupid people", and in this instance you qualify. If you don't like that, too fucking bad. I'm not interested in soothing your wounded ego and I'm even less interested in seeing you continue this bullshit tangent any further.

So you have the option of dropping that tangent and letting this discussion continue without the pointless digression, and you have the other option of being forcibly ejected from these forums for a few days if you insist on carrying on with it.

The fact of the matter, and I've said this regarding this incident in another thread, is that FL almost literally has an alligator in every substantial (more than a puddle, with fish, frogs, turtles, etc) body of water. Attacks used to be rare but idiots feed them so they associate people with food. The problem is that not enough visitors realize this and think you have to be in the swamp to be near them when there's a damned good chance there's one (or more) in the retention pond behind the fucking 7-11.

And at least when I lived in FL (10 years ago) there were virtually no educational campaigns warning people about it. It used to be they took pets, but as FL becomes more crowded, small children will be taken more frequently. It's the states obligation to get the word out, and they should be more focused on that than trying to do the impossible and kill every Burmese Python in the Everglades because that dog won't hunt IMO.

I was at Disney last October, saw an alligator in the water beside the exit to Splash Mountain. My wife spent the entire trip looking at every puddle and ditch trying to see more.

Luke Starkiller wrote:I was at Disney last October, saw an alligator in the water beside the exit to Splash Mountain. My wife spent the entire trip looking at every puddle and ditch trying to see more.

When I was 10 my mother and I went on a canoe trip with the Sierra Club on an inland FL river and lake I cannot remember how to spell. We were going north and the halfway point was the lake. The lake was a good 5-7 miles long and every yard or so was a huge alligator head poking out of the water. My asshole had never been so tight and my balls had never retreated so far into my body before and they have not since.

But now I know where to get rid of a dead body!

Back in the early days of graduate school, before I switched over to Entomology, I took a vacation trip with a friend to Florida. On the way from Tampa to Maimi, we stopped at a fishing dock in the everglades. Because I was insane, I started imitating the distress calls of juvenile alligators (when it comes to various wildlife sounds, I have a pretty good repertoire). Any adult will respond to those calls. Which meant that pretty soon I saw large alligator heads gliding out from the reeds toward the dock I was standing on to investigate.

That was fun. Then there was the baby alligator we grabbed a few days later. Extend the net, grab baby, run 20 meters up the bank so mom does not kill us. Photograph the baby. Let it go five meters from the bank so we have some lead time if mom decides to kill us...

See the theme?

There are certain things I wont do. I will *never* do aquatic insect collection alone inside the range of the American Alligator in any body of water where I can reasonably expect a population with large individuals to be established. I just fucking wont. If I have a buddy with a big ass spot light watching out for me? Sure. But not alone. There was one time when I was in a park in Arlington Texas collecting dragonfly nymphs. Now, there ARE alligators in North Texas. In the Fort Worth Nature Center, there is a substantial population because it is a huge riparian preserve. Where I was, it was a stream fed artificial pond. It was at night. I heard a large animal take something at the waters edge outside the reach of my own huge spot lamp. I noped right out. Turns out, there *was* an alligator in there. About two meters long and no particular danger to me (at least, it would not view me as prey) and it probably migrated up from one of the reservoir lakes. Once I learned that, I felt safe enough to head back (because if there was anything bigger than two meters in a pond as small as that, it would have been kicked out by the bigger individual), but you wont catch me dead working alone in the Forth Worth Nature Center. Nope Nope Nope.

I catch and photograph venomous snakes for fun. But that is something I can control. The snake does not view me as food, I can read their body language and take the necessary precautions. But a big alligator can hide itself in less than a .3 meters of water, and they do view me as food. The only way I can control that is to stay the hell away from the habitat.

Alyrium Denryle wrote:Back in the early days of graduate school, before I switched over to Entomology, I took a vacation trip with a friend to Florida. On the way from Tampa to Maimi, we stopped at a fishing dock in the everglades. Because I was insane, I started imitating the distress calls of juvenile alligators (when it comes to various wildlife sounds, I have a pretty good repertoire). Any adult will respond to those calls. Which meant that pretty soon I saw large alligator heads gliding out from the reeds toward the dock I was standing on to investigate.

Is that a valid way of checking if alligators are in a body of water? Floating speaker on a chord you can swing in from a distance away?

madd0ct0r wrote:

Alyrium Denryle wrote:Back in the early days of graduate school, before I switched over to Entomology, I took a vacation trip with a friend to Florida. On the way from Tampa to Maimi, we stopped at a fishing dock in the everglades. Because I was insane, I started imitating the distress calls of juvenile alligators (when it comes to various wildlife sounds, I have a pretty good repertoire). Any adult will respond to those calls. Which meant that pretty soon I saw large alligator heads gliding out from the reeds toward the dock I was standing on to investigate.

Is that a valid way of checking if alligators are in a body of water? Floating speaker on a chord you can swing in from a distance away?

No, but it is a hell of a lot of fun to do.

Man... I used to go down to the Delray Beach/Boca Raton area to visit relatives and also to fulfill another Jewish stereotype, because why not? The various condominiums/resorts/retirement communities down there are filled with various lakes, ponds, etc. People play golf and sit around by the water all the time. Not once did I ever see an alligator, or even hear someone else mention an alligator-related incident. My little sister and I often played alongside a large artificial pond that contained turtles/frogs and other assorted wildlife, but nobody warned us about alligators. I always assumed most of the alligator population was much further south in the Everglades area.

30-40 years ago the American alligator was endangered and rare. Take that into account when you're reminiscing. They've made quite a come back.

Broomstick wrote:30-40 years ago the American alligator was endangered and rare. Take that into account when you're reminiscing. They've made quite a come back.

That, and if they don't want to be seen, they won't be-- there's a very good reason that a lot of stories about gator attacks start with "well we saw something that looked like a floating log in the water..."

That said, likely small bodies of water by commercial condo developments probably don't have a whole lot of anything that gators would like to eat in them. Probably lots of chemicals to kill mosquito larvae and all that fun stuff. There might be some introduced small fish for Grandpa to take the kiddies fishing with, but that's about it. Of course, twenty years down the road, when things die down a bit...

Elheru Aran wrote:

Broomstick wrote:30-40 years ago the American alligator was endangered and rare. Take that into account when you're reminiscing. They've made quite a come back.

That, and if they don't want to be seen, they won't be-- there's a very good reason that a lot of stories about gator attacks start with "well we saw something that looked like a floating log in the water..."

That said, likely small bodies of water by commercial condo developments probably don't have a whole lot of anything that gators would like to eat in them. Probably lots of chemicals to kill mosquito larvae and all that fun stuff. There might be some introduced small fish for Grandpa to take the kiddies fishing with, but that's about it. Of course, twenty years down the road, when things die down a bit...

Actually, the canals that run through residential areas have all manner of things in them. Turtles, fish, frogs, sirens (aquatic salamanders), snakes, raccoons, housecats....

Alyrium Denryle wrote:

Elheru Aran wrote:

Broomstick wrote:30-40 years ago the American alligator was endangered and rare. Take that into account when you're reminiscing. They've made quite a come back.

That, and if they don't want to be seen, they won't be-- there's a very good reason that a lot of stories about gator attacks start with "well we saw something that looked like a floating log in the water..."

That said, likely small bodies of water by commercial condo developments probably don't have a whole lot of anything that gators would like to eat in them. Probably lots of chemicals to kill mosquito larvae and all that fun stuff. There might be some introduced small fish for Grandpa to take the kiddies fishing with, but that's about it. Of course, twenty years down the road, when things die down a bit...

Actually, the canals that run through residential areas have all manner of things in them. Turtles, fish, frogs, sirens (aquatic salamanders), snakes, raccoons, housecats....

I was thinking back when he was visiting relatives, if he was fairly young they might have been pretty recently built back in the 80s or whatever (I'm assuming he's ~30s). Whatever bodies of water they scraped into the ground at the time might not have had that much fauna and flora going on at the time. I suspect it's likely that in a tropical climate like Florida they could fill up more quickly than I might think, of course. Has anybody ever dug a canal or pond specifically to observe that kind of thing?

Of course, the lack of concern about alligators probably has far more to do with Broomstick's observation that they were pretty endangered/threatened back then...

Alyrium Denryle wrote:

Elheru Aran wrote:

Broomstick wrote:30-40 years ago the American alligator was endangered and rare. Take that into account when you're reminiscing. They've made quite a come back.

That, and if they don't want to be seen, they won't be-- there's a very good reason that a lot of stories about gator attacks start with "well we saw something that looked like a floating log in the water..."

That said, likely small bodies of water by commercial condo developments probably don't have a whole lot of anything that gators would like to eat in them. Probably lots of chemicals to kill mosquito larvae and all that fun stuff. There might be some introduced small fish for Grandpa to take the kiddies fishing with, but that's about it. Of course, twenty years down the road, when things die down a bit...

Actually, the canals that run through residential areas have all manner of things in them. Turtles, fish, frogs, sirens (aquatic salamanders), snakes, raccoons, housecats....

Yeah, if you live near a canal and are missing a cat... We'll there's a good chance a gator had a meal. And more small children will be taken and at least drowned as the population in America's wang booms the way it has been with the zero information campaign it's my understanding the Administration of Gov. Dick Snot has been running. I'm surprised they cancelled the "take candy from, and help strangers find their missing puppy" campaigns.