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.

When you decide you'd like to set up a terrarium for your reptiles, you can go for a simple set-up or one that's considerably more complex.

The simple set-up is basically a monastic cell, with newspaper/paper towels on the bottom, a plastic hide box and a water container. Easy to set up, easy to maintain.



If the idea of looking at something so unadorned doesn't appeal to you (or if you figure your pet desires more than the least you can provide), you can put more effort into the setup and create something more naturalistic.

My first tokay gecko was purchased on a whim. I was living in Albuquerque, NM, just out of college, living back home while looking for work with no idea of where I'd end up. I made one of my regular trips into the only pet store in town that sold reptiles, and came eyeball to eyeball with a tokay gecko.

For someone whose lifetime experience with lizards had been limited to whiptails and what we called sand lizards (Uta sp.) the tokay was breathtaking. Money changed hands (I think the gecko cost $6.95) and I went home, proudly bearing my new treasure in a brown paper bag. I had a glass-fronted cage made from a dresser drawer leftover from my high school days, so I dug the cage out and set it up. I opened the bag with the gecko inside and placed it inside the cage. Pretty soon Fido Fidas Fidarae, Fido for short, came out of the bag and clung enchantingly to the back wall of the cage. I sat and watched him. He was something to look at, grey with powdered blue and deep red tubercles.

I knew nothing about geckos, and no idea Fido was nocturnal, although his large eyes gave me a basic clue. When he didn't immediately drink from his water dish, I was worried because I knew that reptiles need water. I opened the cage, covered my hand with a hand towel (I'd been bitten by race runners and knew lizards could nip) and picked him up. I offered him fresh cool water, streaming from the bathroom sink. He thanked me by turning inside the towel and latching onto the very end of my index finger. I saw stars. I tried to free my finger by pulling gently. He tightened down so hard his eyeballs sank in. I took him into the utility room and tried to gently pry his mouth open with a screwdriver. His jaw bent alarmingly and his eyeballs sunk in.

The two of us wandered around the house, my free hand supporting the lizard/hand/towel combination. I wondered what to do next, imagining the lizard as part of a bridal bouquet. I didn't even have a boyfriend at the time, but it was beginning to feel as if this lizard was going to be a permanent attachment. I returned to the bathroom sink, filled it partially with cool water, and stuck my lizardhand, already a single word in my vernacular, into the water. To my numbed delight, Fido let go. I drained the sink, covered him with the towel, and picked him up carefully and returned him to his house.

I moved to Florida a few months later, and Fido went with me. He lived for years, drinking sprayed-in water droplets from the sides of his tank and feeding on thawed, frozen mice. He took them with such intensity his eyeballs sank in, and it always made me flinch.

Things turned out OK for me and Fido, but the moral of this story is simply know what you're getting into before you plunk down your cash.

Your fingertips may thank you.