We're used to drop-ins at our place, and last week was no exception. A 30-inch gator took up residence in the small frog pool we dug on the unfenced north end of our yard.



We live about a half mile from a large pond, fed by a small creek. Once in a while a good-sized gator is on the losing side of a nocturnal territory dispute and leaves the pond as a result.

We've had 8-footers in our yard twice. Once or twice during daylight hours we've seen smaller gators, about 4 feet long, stalking with great dignity alongside Williston Road, a busy street that separates our yard and the large pond from Payne's Prairie. But this is a losing stroll; busy roadways and wandering gators don't mix. A few may make it across; the next day all we see are the flattened corpses of those that don't.

Although they have been amazing prolific, it is still hard to be an alligator in Florida. Human invaders have taken over lakeside/riverside properties and their yappy dogs/sunning housecats are no match for a gator's jaws. Homeowners are nervous about gators, but dry land unprovoked attacks on humans are extremely rare. Alligators seem to sense human contact is to be avoided. But when the young gators grow too large to be tolerated by the resident bull gators, territory disputes result and the loser has to leave. Will he find a place to live before he wanders across a roadway? It's a race against time, stacked against the gator.

"Help" is available. The state has a program to deal with what's called nuisance alligators, those four feet or longer that are considered to be dangerous by the individuals who call the state's wildlife hotline. A licensed alligator trapper is summoned to haul away said gator. That gator, poor thing, becomes the property of the trapper. The "property" turns into meat and a tanned skin, a source of income for the trapper.

We discovered our latest too-small-to-be-a-problem gator late one afternoon when we walked up the hill to see how the new sod rimming the frog pool was faring. Centered in the pool, splayed to keep himself as inconspicuous as possible and circling to keep us in sight, was a thin, small gator. He obviously found us disquieting. The problem was space; the pool he had "discovered" was just 15 feet in diameter and maybe a foot deep. The pool wasn't large enough to offer enough cover to a hatchling gator, much less to this guy, who we guessed at maybe two years old. (A foot of water doesn't provide any invisibility to a creature whose survival depends on not being seen.)

We thought about where to relocate him (we know more about nearby bodies of water that he would, obviously) , but in the meantime hospitality won out and we offered comfort food. This was in the form of two dead white mice, tossed in the pond under cover of darkness. The impact of mice on water resulted in an agitated thrashing on the part of the gator.

Our visit and the mice evidently proved to be too much of an intrusion. Next morning the gator was gone and the untouched mice were still near the water's edge. I haven't had the heart to check Williston Road.