Several years ago my wife and I went for a boat ride near Sanibel island in southern Florida. The ride was a primer on local fauna and flora. The guide pointed out that in his incredibly stupid natural state a gator thinks people are predators, so they steer away from them. But if somebody feeds a gator the gator then decides people are prey. That leads to the saying: "A fed gator is a dead gator." Once the gator has been fed he's on his way out. Here at Hawthorne we used to have a gator -- about the length of a fair sized rowboat -- who'd sun on the shore across from the marina. Eventually somebody fed him, so we had to put him down. It was sad, but that's the way of gators.
