Gotta love Florida! Beautiful beaches, great politics, bikini clad ladies. On the other hand, you have poisonous snakes, alligators, tons of smaller lizards (I hate lizards), and black panthers. No, not the militant group. Those might be preferable than the giant kitty cats stalking prey in Florida.
Yet Floridians are undeterred. Video after video are out there of gators eating old ladies, dogs, kids; it’s bananas! Or pork sandwich, as one couple taking a dip in a nice, cool Florida stream apparently were hand feeding a couple of gators bites of their lunch. Possibly before becoming lunch.
— Rob Mattox (@RobMattox2) March 23, 2023
In the Tweet, in the embedded video you will see a middle-aged couple chilling in the creek, while two pant-poopingly large gators come swimming up looking for a tasty treat. Presumably it was going to be a human treat, but Florida man said, ‘not so fast. Pork sammy?’ At least that what I ascertained from watching. It also appeared that both folks might have had some experience around gators. Or a suicide pact. You decide.
So what are the odds of these two nitwits coming out unscathed? Better than you think. Check this out.
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the likelihood of a Floridian being bitten is low. In 2021, there were seven people who suffered major bites from gators. From 1948 to 2021, there were 442 unprovoked gator bites in Florida and 26 people killed over that time period. The FWC says that the chances of being seriously injured by a gator in an unprovoked attack is around 1:3.1 million.
Remember, feeding alligators in Florida is illegal.
So, does that justify the craziness displayed here? Or maybe is that just a reflection of how many damn gators there are in Florida. Either way, why tempt fate? I just assume that if you are in or anywhere near fresh water in the Sunshine State, either a meth-head or a gator is somewhere nearby. The meth-head might not be interested in your lunch, but the gator certainly will.
The original video was shared on the “onlyinflorida” Instagram page, and commentors weren’t exactly overjoyed.
“I have a friend that is a nuisance gator hunter in Florida. He has a job because of people like these. He would just as soon leave them to do their own thing if this crowd didn’t desensitize them so that they come looking for a meal when they hear little Billy jump in the river,” one concerned observer wrote.
“This is illegal for good reason. Someone is likely to be hurt by training these dinosaurs to associate swimmers with food. Only a moron would do this,” wrote another guy.
Marie is not impressed by such behavior on Florida waters.
“And this makes alligators think they should come up to strangers for food…which is what I noticed when paddle boarding. This is dangerous,” she commented.
Needless to say, this one pretty much united Floridians. They don’t want hand-fed gators in the wild looking for pork loin sandwiches.
It is unknown if the couple were Florida residents or vacationers, presumably from hell. What I do know, as a frequent visitor to the Sunshine State, is that if I see a gator, all it sees of me is the back side. I don’t wait around to see if it wants a pork sandwich, or a “hand” sandwich. Leave the dinosaurs and the meth-heads alone, and stay away from fresh water. That is the best practice for Florida.
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