About a half a mile from our house there is a small drainage culvert that channels water from a small neighborhood lake and wetland, beneath a busy highway, and into the Paynes Prairie basin. Various herps at various times utilize this culvert to assuage their various needs. Patti and I occasionally visit the canal just to see what creatures happen to be present at different times.



Sometimes we're surprised, sometimes we're not. When the water is flowing strongly it may attain a depth of about a foot. More normally it is 8 inches or less deep. Sometimes the culvert is totally dry and during droughts it may remain dry for weeks or even months on end.

But when times are good and the water is gurgling through this tiny culvert, I am provided with as good a chance at seeing a greater siren, Siren lacertina, or a two-toed amphiuma, Amphiuma means, as any other locale I know. One night when Mike and I stopped by we were happy to see hundreds of bluefin killifish. A Florida banded water snake or two is not an unusual find.

Patti made what was probably the most unexpected and most memorable find . We were passing the culvert one night and decided to check it out. Patti, being much more nimble than I, clambered down the slope to the culvert to see what wonders of nature awaited her scrutiny. Headlight gleaming, she peered into the culvert, made an immediate exclamation and scurried back up the slope.

"What's the hurry?" I asked. "

"Look over the edge," Patti said.

I did and leaning as far forward as I dared I could barely see the tip of a rounded black object.

She had come nose to nose with a 10 foot alligator, Alligator mississippiensis, that was sheltering quietly in the culvert.

We both decided that we had enough of herping for the evening.