Despite not seeing that much wildlife I have, however, become fascinated with seeing an alligator. Ever since we arrived and it dawned on me that I no longer am in the desert and that big water equals big reptiles. I am further determined to see an alligator not by going anywhere they are known to be, but just by chance, those are the rules.
Maybe just once, while driving on the highway, I'll see the head and eyes of a ferocious and ancient predator peeking out from that large body of water over there. A wild alligator. Maybe when I look at a puddle a completely harmless, cute, lost baby alligator will swim up and I will pet it.
Maybe.....
My ambitions were further perpetuated when my neighbor told me a story of how JUST LAST SUMMER a 5 footer was caught in the pond behind the complex, the wild untamed pond which overflows into swamp land. There were police, he actually got the see the alligator, it was all VERY dramatic.
Which leads me to look at every pond with both suspicion and excitement.
So it started, of course, on a regular Saturday morning where I wanted to get the dogs exercised before it got too hot to go out. I am also attempting to get back into shape (which is very successful by the way :) ) and I run with them. I go all the way around our gated snooty community, which offers many amenities, one of which happens to be large ponds with pretty fountains in the middle. Now the ponds closer to where we live are small, treated and probably only harbor bacteria/algae, but there is a large pond, with a bench, in the even nicer gated community next to ours.
I ALWAYS stop at this bench: 1. because I am still not in great shape and by this point I have to stop and 2. because I am DETERMINED that this pond is the home of an alligator and I, Leslie Reynolds Zoologist, am going to spot it.
So, determined and with unwavering bravery: I waited.
In my unfaltering bravery, my heroism of protecting the neighborhood in which I do not live from dangerous wildlife I hear a noise to my left.
Bird.
I go back to gazing into the distance when I catch movement in the water, RIGHT. IN. FRONT. OF. ME.
I stop.
Can they sense movement? If I stay still will it not see me? Do they have heat vision? Will it really jump out like the Lake Placid croc?
Feeling no choice but to focus my eyes on the ripples of water in front of me... I look down and there it is.
It takes a moment for my brain to interpret what I'm seeing, every inch of scaly skin, every....
What is it?
is it his nose?
BOOP!
under the water.
holy shit.... what WAS that??!?!
BOOP back up again just a foot from where it was before.
HOLY SHIT LESLIE THIS IS IT THIS IS YOUR ALLIGATOR!
BOOP.
its gone.
By this time I have jumped up and I am ready for flight. That was too close, I am still trying to figure out what it is I'm seeing, is this the bitey end or the other end? I don't understand why I feel like I've seen something like this before...
it was small, how anticlimatic was that?
wait.....
there is other wildlife in water.... in fact I have seen something similar to this back at NMSU where they had a... turtle pond.....
that was....
a turtle.
And that was when I realized that I hadn't seen an alligator, not even a small one, and it was just a turtle coming to see if I was going to throw it some bread. Because there is no way that this snooty community I live in would allow an alligator to dwell in its waters.
So I did not, in fact, ever see an alligator at all but for that brief moment I, and now all of you, thought that I had seen an alligator. I mean, I guess it kind of counts, I am now more prepared to see one than ever and maybe next time I'll wear my head lamp. I dunno... it's a head lamp, it might... help...
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