I admit it, I'm dumb about alligators.

[Hortensis]

59. Regularly? No. Overall quite rare given how

many alligators and people there are. I'm not any kind of Floridian, though, and right now this dreadful tragedy is making this grandmother feel nervous several hundred miles away. It was apparently just a small gator...

Our old vacation mobile home on 1/3 acre down there has wild pond and marsh on two sides, three if you count the far side of our next-door-neighbor, and there are mature alligators out there. No one's ever been killed in our neighborhood or I think even that anyone we know has ever heard of, but a neighbor once saw the woman who lived before us in our trailer being paced by a large gator as she strolled along the shoreline that runs parallel to our trailer and patio--only 20 feet away from them for their entire length, much closer still to the old well and shed.

I walk down to the water whenever I feel like it, but I never hang at or walk along it for any length of time--or sit on the little old dock with any regularity, and, laughably snowbirdish or not (and our neighbors think it is), I always check the patio before going out onto it at night. And now I'll be even more careful when our grandchildren visit. This is the kind of thing I won't be able to forget.