Alligators

Over the Christmas break we had a nice visit from my [Jared's] brother and his wife. Neither had seen alligators in the wild before so we took them on a nice little hike to see some alligators. Here are a few pictures.

Anwyn with one of her dolls.

A pretty alligator. We were at least 10 feet away.

Another alligator sitting in the water.

Kristi and Anwyn on the trail. We're hiking through a prairie here in Florida. With so many trees, open space is pretty rare in this part of Florida.

Jared and Lily. Notice the lovely bright sun and warm temperatures. We can't complain about this winter weather. We are thankful to live somewhere warm.

A large flock of sandhill cranes. They were very noisy.

An alligator lurking in the water.

Here's a close-up of an alligator's mouth and teeth.

We had a great time. I never get tired of seeing wild alligators. They are usually very mild-mannered (just don't let your small animals or children get too near to them. I also wouldn't go up and pet one but staying at least 5 or 6 feet away should be just fine, that is until one decides you look like a good dinner). This particular alligator (the one we were closest to and the one in the last photo) only blinked at us. We never saw her move anything but an eyelid. There were supposed to be a bunch of baby alligators around but we didn't see any. We say 8-10 alligators in total on the hike (last time we went we saw about 50).