I stopped at nine mile pond and was able to military crawl up to a napping gator. He was very comfortable with me. He would open his eye for about 30 seconds, and then close it for about the same. I snapped at least a dozen photos of him.
Later I found a female gator with her hatchlings. Very strange given the time of year and their size (not more than 10 inches). They sure looked like they were recently hatched but that is not possible?
I also snapped a photo of a gator with a partially regenerated tail? I have seen a few examples of a single large scale rounding off the end of a broken tail, but this animal looked as if several inches had been regenerated. It is hard to tell in the photo, but the new part is angled upward, not in the same plane as the rest of the tail (like you often see with lizards).
Eric Erb
