See Y'all Later, Alligator! - Day 9

We went to Houston for two reasons - astronauts and alligators. My boys have been wanting to see real alligators in the wild for forever, so we headed down to Brazos Bend state park hoping to catch a glimpse of the king of the reptiles - the alligator.

First we explored the nature center.

Petting a snake was cool...

...but just not a cool as petting a real baby alligator. He was a year old and pretty cute.

It was hard to believe that that little guy could grow as large as 18 feet long with teeth like this!

As exciting is it was to touch a baby alligator, but now they all wanted to see some full grown ones. You know, the scary teeth-filled kind.

But there was more to see in Brazos Bend than alligators, like the huge trees hanging with long clumps of moss and giant cicadas screeching up in the trees.

It was very hot and humid. We ate a picnic lunch and tried to stay cool as we enjoyed the views of the swampy lake and waited for it to get cool enough for the alligators to come out and play.

Huge water lilies, bugs, and water fowl were all we saw, however, so we decided to drive over to another lake to see what we could find.

Am I the only one who is a little disturbed to see this alligator warning sign on a playground? Yikes! There is also a campground here. People actually go camping with wild alligators running around. I was getting a little nervous.

Caleb won the prize for spotting the first alligator. It was swimming under a fishing dock. (top right picture.) Of course, the boys were so excited and ran onto the dock and peeked through the floor boards to catch a peek! It was so exciting to be just a few feet away from an alligator!

Within minutes the whole gang of boys were on deck.

Pretty soon there were more alligators swimming around right under our feet! I think we counted about 7. Some were pretty big! It was an eerie feeling to have huge alligators so close.

We soon figured out what the alligators were doing there. Fishing. Well, sort of.

We met this guy, Kenneth, who come to Brazos Bend from Louisiana once a month to go fishing. He fishes, and then when he catches something the alligators try to grab his catch before he can get it out of the water.

It is ultimate competitive fishing. Man vs. Alligator!!!

Once Kenneth determined where the fish were biting, he would go to the other side of the pier and throw his line in the water as a lure and wait for the alligators to arrive. As soon as they arrived to wait for the next catch, he would run back to the other side of the dock and throw in his line and hope to catch a fish before the alligators realized they had been duped and came back. Most of the time he would snatch the fish out of the water just in time before the angry alligators came snapping up out of the water! Just like in the cartoons. It was unreal! But Kenneth was quite good at competitive fishing because even with the alligators in hot pursuit, he caught about 30 fish in the time we were there.

The alligators were not always too happy with this friendly competition, and a few times they hissed and growled. I was not prepared for how LOUD their growls were - like the roar of a bear. Two alligators started fighting under the dock and let out a growl that scared me so bad I think I jumped two feet in the air! In this case, though, I have a feeling their bark is not as bad as their bite!

Of course, the boys wanted to play fishing-with-alligators too, so they grabbed a few poles and tried their hand at it. Who says fishing is boring? Not with a half dozen hungry alligators swimming around!

Nathan did great! He caught a few fish...

But his catch of the day was a large 15 foot alligator! It jumped and grabbed the fish Nate caught, and the hook must have gotten caught in his teeth because he started swimming all around with the line still in his mouth. Nathan didn't know what to do. His line was unwinding and he didn't dare try to reel the humongous creature in! Finally he cut the line.

The one that got away!

Now Nathan has a whopper of a fishing tale to tell!

For the rest of the time we were there that alligator was still dragging that fishing line around. See it above?

That didn't deter anyone. Now ALL the boys wanted to try their hand at alligator fishing.

Even little Caleb found a long piece of twisted up fishing line and tied little bait fish on the end and hung it over the side hoping to get a nibble... or a CHOMP!

Isn't he cute? I think he was smiling for the camera.

I was still creeped out, by the way.

Originally we had planned on taking a hike around the lake and visit an observation tower on the other side of the lake, but the alligators at the fishing dock distracted everyone for several hours. Finally, before it got dark, Alex, Caleb and I decided to leave the others to fight off the alligators while we went on a nice, leasirely, alligator-free walk.

Such a pretty time of day! There is the tower we were heading for, but we stopped to look at the beautiful yellow water lilies,

blue dragonflies, large spiders on elaborate webs, and old trees draped in silvery moss.

We were so busy stopping to smell the flowers that we almost ran into this ominous fellow casually sunning himself right on the trail about a fourth of the way around the lake. Hello there, pal.

He was huge, and though he was kind enough to stay over to the side and give us our own lane, we were reluctant to share the road with him.

The thing is, they are very clear at this park that you have to stay on the trail for safety reasons. Period. Well, in this case, the trail was not looking very safe either. We couldn't go around him because there was a lake on one side and a dark and ominous wood on the other. We stood there at a safe distance for a while, hoping the road hog would slip back into the lake, but no such luck. We just stood there, eyeing each other for a while. At once point he even raised his claw up toward us. It looked just like he was beckoning us! "Come on. It's fine. Walk on by. I'm not gonna hurt you." Ya, right, pal. Nice try.

We turned and walked back the way we came. We never made it to the observation tower. This time the alligator won.

But on the walk back we made another discovery. Lightening bugs! My boys have never seen them before, so at first they didn't quite know what they were seeing - small flashes of light in the darker parts of the woods. They started chasing them around, and catching them in their hands before someone got the idea to put them in an empty water bottle. They ran off the find their brothers who all got busy catching fireflies for their bottle. We had a bottle that glowed all the way home.

See y'all later, alligators!