Ah, Sunny Florida!

Tips for first-time Sunshine State visitors

By Tim Bennett

 

As the temperature dips, heavy coats are donned and the snowdrifts rise, many Central New Yorkers will surf the net for cheap flights to warmer climes to seek solace from the winter.

If this is your first visit to the Sunshine State, you need to be warned: They think differently down there.

Maybe it’s from being out in the sun too long, I don’t know. But things a northeasterner would consider dangerous, Floridians hardly notice.

Take, for example, their view of alligators or “gators” as they call them.

I saw their perception was quite different from mine when I was traveling the highway from Miami a number of years ago. Of course, being an avid wildlife watcher, the one thing I wanted to see in Florida was a real alligator. I’ve seen so many deer and woodchucks in New York I am almost bored with the abundance. I needed to spot something more rare and exotic.

To my delight, just parallel to the road, was a canal of the Everglades Park. My 10-year-old son, Samuel, and I began competing to see who could spot the most gators.

“There’s one, Sam!” I pointed: “Right there! Did you see him move?” Sam turned his head to where I was pointing.

“Yeah!” He screamed. “Dad, over there! On the shore!”

We were delirious with joy and his older 12-year-old sister and mom joined in the shouting at every sighting. We must have counted more than six gators. Of course, they were relatively small, maybe 5 or 6 feet, but they were alligators.

What alerted me to a different mentality down there is what I saw next.

Just a short distance from where we had just seen an alligator, there was a parked pick-up truck and a young family sliding down a slope to the canal. One little girl even had on a swimming suit. My enthusiasm turned to concern. What’s wrong with this picture? As a non-native, it was pretty obvious. Still, I took note. Something’s not right here.

This was confirmed when we were invited to a church picnic. There was a good-sized lake out back and I asked my host my standard question: “Any gators in it?” The homeowner replied, “Oh, there was a 6-footer, but we think he left.” He then turned to speak with someone else. I had just happily piled my plate high with burgers, beans, corn on the cob and potato salad and sat down at a table overlooking the lake.

My appetite quickly vanished when I saw my son with other kids getting into a little boat and pushing it out from shore. They were yelling, splashing and just having fun. But all I could think of was — there was a 6-footer, but we think he left.

I also kept thinking of a photo I had recently seen in National Geographic magazine where an alligator looked like it was gliding smoothly in the water toward a gazelle, which was totally unaware of its approach. The gator looked like a floating log with a knot (his eye) on it. It probably didn’t help either that I had recently heard about a Florida jogger on the news being caught and killed by an alligator and another story about a 10-foot gator banging into an old lady’s front door.

I looked around to see if there was at least one parent who cared if their child became ‘hot human legs’ for a hungry alligator. No one showed the least bit of concern. Two lines kept repeating in my head: You think it left. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that the gator had left before letting your young guests go in the lake?

I put my corn on the cob down and yelled, “Sammy, sit down in the boat!” My eyes quickly scanned the lake for floating logs. I saw none. But it took all the self-control I could muster not to stand up, turn to the crowd and start screaming, “Are you freaking people out of your minds? Splashing doesn’t scare alligators away. It’s a dinner bell for crying out loud! Those are our kids out there! Am I the only one who cares?”

Still, I managed to keep my nerves in check until the kids came in for homemade ice cream.

Later, at his house, our friend and host, Kent, just pooh-poohed my anxiety and said, “Ah…they’re just large lizards.”

Yeah, just lizards, I thought, with lovely teeth to chew you with.

I decided to change the subject. “So, Kent, what do you guys do in the event of a hurricane?”

Kent showed me the metal shutters they had on the outside of the house. “That’s it,” I said incredulously. “Why don’t you get a house with a cellar?”

“Not possible, only sandy soil here in Florida,” he said. “You’d probably hit water if you dug too deep.”

“So, if your area gets hit by a hurricane, you close the shutters, hide in your closet and hope for the best?”

“Yeah. That’s about it,” Kent shrugged.

Like I said, people think differently down there. Beware.