Five alligators in the sun and more coming!

This work week has ended and what a week it has been! Who would believe the kinds of things that rangers have to tell about what visitors do to the wild animals in our national parks? As of this week I will believe pretty much anything that a ranger tells me. I personally stopped five different people from attempting to touch an alligator, one from throwing rocks at them, one was poking one with a stick and too many to count who wanted to get closer for a picture! 

Most memorable of all was the mother of a girl about seven and boy two or three years younger,  who was trying to get her children to go and touch the alligator (one about 10' long) so that she could take their picture while they did so. When I shouted from some distance to get the children back, the enraged mother verbally attacked me to the point that I had to threaten to call a Law Enforcement officer and have her removed from the park in order to get her to back off. Her statement was "Now you have made my children too afraid of the alligators for me to get any good pictures!" i  sure do hope that I succeeded in that.