Sunshine, lightning, an alligator and snake

Today was another sunny day here in Florida, but then pretty much every day is sunny, that’s why they call it the Sunshine State, I guess?  The weather is very different from my home town in the North of England, but so far, I am adapting well to the lack of dark, cold, grey, rainy days that go on and on and leave you feeling melancholy, grim and forlorn.

As well as the sunshine, they do have hurricanes here, of course, though I’ve yet to experience one of those.  I’ve endured a few serious electrical storms, however.  They are certainly dramatic and I am reminded why this area of the world is known as “Lightning Alley”.  The rumble of the accompanying thunder can be very loud too, though interestingly because Florida is as flat as a pancake, it never has that echoing-through-the-valley sound effect that you get in the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria.



My running shoes

With no job to sap my time and energy and needing to keep fit, I have been going out running every day.  This past week I’ve been encountering some of the neighbourhood wildlife at what the locals call the “small pond”.  A pond is generally a rather tiny ornamental thing in England, but this stretch of water is about the size of a running track with brush and a stagnant stream running along its far side.

Anyway, for the past few days I’ve been seeing a small alligator in the pond.  It’s only about 4 foot long which makes it very much a youngster in gator terms.  They are remarkably good at camouflage, having perfected the art of making themselves look like pieces of partially submerged driftwood and vegetation, whilst they wait for their prey to come to the water’s edge.  But as this gator hangs out in almost exactly the same spot every day, it’s not been too difficult to locate, once I’ve trained my eyes.  He’s scared of me though, and when I get too near, he panics and splashes off under the water and away from the pond side.



I'm only a few yards away but he's not easy to see!



Let's zoom in a little and catch him lurking.

 After two days of good sightings, the gator wasn’t there when I went past today.  Maybe he’s moved on to greener pastures (or swampier waters), or maybe because today’s been cooler and he’s cold-blooded, he’s decided not to venture out?  Whilst I was looking for him, however, my eye was drawn to what I believed to be a bicyle inner tube that somebody had dumped by the water’s edge.  The way it was curled up looked funny somehow.  As I moved in closer, I noticed that the “inner tube” had a head – it was a large grey snake looking straight at me!



(When I described the incident to my wife later, she informed me that I needed to watch out for poisonous snakes when going near the pond.  “They won’t harm you unless you approach them quickly, or step on or over them,” she told me.  Which is not exactly reassuring advice for a runner, who is by nature, approaching everything pretty swiftly and stepping on or over things, as a matter of course!)



I guess I’m in two minds about the “exotic” local animal life that you find here.  On the one hand, I find it exciting and amazing that some creatures that I would only have been able to see in a zoo back in the UK are running around freely over here.  On the other, I really don’t fancy the idea of being bitten, or having some huge spider drop on my head when I’m in the woods, or suchlike, that would be Nature getting too close-up for my liking!

It’s a dichotomy I could ponder for some time.  But all in all, I guess the alligator and snake were here first (the gators have been around since prehistoric times) and there’s enough sunshine around in Florida for everbody, man or beast, to share.