Someone over in the wildlife department brought two incredibly cute little alligators as part of some class over in wildlife. I was a bit surprised at how soft these alligators were when I petted them. When their mouths are taped shut, it's easy to be unafraid of them, and even if they were untaped, I think the cold and their size would still make them relatively unscary. It's the ones that are a fair bit bigger that I'd be afraid of. One thing people seem not to realize is that a lot of animals do indeed have individual personalities -- one of the alligators (the one I'm holding) was a lot more shy and passive, while the other one was more interested in wandering around the professor's office and taking a better look at his social studies books and papers he had to grade. I was hoping I'd get a chance to watch these guys catch some little animal and eat it, but unfortunately the guy from wildlife merely stuffed them into a cloth bag and carried them off to his class.
Maybe one day I'll get to watch a snake catch prey and eat it... there's something inherently beautiful about watching predators catching and killing their prey. Or maybe I'll watch a raptor swoop down on its prey -- I was once lucky enough to witness a fairly large hawk, probably the one that was following me around for a while at Gator Bowmen, swoop down from the trees to catch one of the many robins and taking it apart. It was such a fascinating sight, even though it was from a pretty good distance and I didn't have my binoculars with me. One of these days, I'll probably catch something besides lizards that make the mistake of napping in the field targets!
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