HOUSTON CHRONICLE (Texas) 02 December 06 When will Texas see its first fatal alligator incident? (Shannon Tompkins)
One day -- probably sooner than later -- Texas will see its first human fatality caused by an alligator attack.
This sobering belief came to mind again this Sunday afternoon while hiking trails at Brazos Bend State Park.
Walking the trails around the park's Horseshoe Lakes, we twice came upon a healthy gator - a 10-footer and one maybe 8 feet - that had hauled out of the swampy sloughs and were basking on the bank. In both instances, the gators were no more than a half-dozen yards off the trail.
We kept our distance, walking wide of the trail and keeping an eye on the reptiles. They seemed perfectly benign, squatting there, eyes half closed and wearing those permanent, toothy smiles.
But I know better. I've lived around alligators all my life. Several times, I've helped catch, handle, measure, tag and otherwise mess with gators. And I see them regularly while hunting, fishing, paddling or, as happened Sunday, just wandering through the places they live.
I'm not scared of alligators. But I very much respect them. I very well know how powerful, predatory, unpredictable and, yes, dangerous, they can be. They are wild animals. I treat alligators like I treat a running chainsaw. But, increasingly, people who have no real knowledge of alligators or their behavior are coming in contact with the reptiles. This was obvious watching many of the other visitors to Brazos Bend. Despite the ubiquitous signs warning against getting to close to alligators and explaining the potential dangers of messing with these big lizards, many of the folks who saw gators in the park's waters or hauled out on the bank treated them as if they were in some zoo. Even more of a sign of the inevitablilty of someone getting seriously injured by an alligator is the human invasion of alligators' homes. The countryside around Brazos Bend, like as in every direction around Houston, is exploding in housing developments. Fort Bend County, a rural county just a decade or two ago, has transformed into suburbs.
Houses now sprout around bayous and canals, ponds and sloughs and other waterways that long have been home to alligators. We have moved into their world. Ugly encounters are inevitable.
Texas has never had a documented human fatality from an alligator attack and barely a dozen attacks.
Florida has seen 20 fatalities in the past half-century or so, and more than 300 attacks.
Yes, Florida has as many as three times the number of alligators as Texas. But that's not the reason for the disparity in alligator attacks and fatalities. Louisiana has as many alligators as Florida - about 1.5 million. And Louisiana has documented fewer than 10 attacks and no fatalities.
Alligators are the same animal in both states. They behave exactly alike. The difference is human behavior.
Alligator attacks often happen when people do stupid things like feed alligators, leading the reptiles to associate humans with food. Or people go swimming or wading or for someother reason enter alligator habitat without taking proper precautions. To be brutally honest, I believe some alligator attacks are simply Natural Selection at work.
Texas isn't Florida, yet. But we're getting there. It's just a matter of time before Texas joins Florida and Georgia as states where a human/alligator encounter turns deadly for the human.
http://blogs.chron.com/shannontompkins/2006/12/when_will_texas_see_its_first_fatal_alligator_incident.html
