The educational experience of a lifetime!
“An environmental education student gets to feel the back of a young alligator on the refuge”
Please do observe the tape around the young gator’s mouth to protect all involved!
Picture credit: Steve Hillebrand, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Public Domain)
Just now while having our lunch, this story came on our local News and became an instant must be reported story.
We do not have a lock on wildlife ignorance or abuse here in Lake County, but we must be a close runner-up.
Apparently a group of young Police Cadets were at a facility in Tavares, here in Lake County and were in training on how to handle Gators.
It is said that one of the Cadets tripped and fell on top of the four-foot gator, (making it fairly young) which then clamped down on the Cadet’s hand and would not let go.
Please, try for a moment to understand the experience of having a quite large thing/person falling on top of you and what your immediate reaction might have been?
When the Gator did not let go of the Cadet’s hand, one of the FWC who were on hand to demonstrate, or instruct the Police Cadets on how to properly and assuming, safely , deal with, or handle coming face to face with Gators in their daily duties or routines, immediately shot and killed the Gator.
The person sitting directly across from me, whose Blog is sarcastically called, ” This Is Florida Don’t You Know, “
in reference to the things that happen here every day, that make us scratch our heads, immediately asked this question:
” why would they be using a real alligator in this kind of training exercise with young, inexperienced Police Cadets and why wasn’t the Gator’s mouth taped closed? “
As for me, I have nothing more to say, I am completely speechless.
You may read about this story here:
Gator shot after biting cadet’s hand during training exercise in Tavares
Walking with the Alligators 
Reblogged this on sachemspeaks and commented:
Must read story
Thank you kindly for sharing this unbelievable story!
How this touched my Heart. Thank you. Love, Amy
Thank you for your kind thoughts Amy.
I was outraged! It did not need to happen, like all of the Bear killings.
It is a sickening pattern.
The ignorance and the disrespect for life on this planet is sickening. How animals are treated outrages me, believe me, so I have been in the positition in my corner of the world to do what I can. I do not have real friendly feelings towards humans who hurt animals. Believe me. (((HUGS))) Amy
We are in complete agreement Amy!
I know. I know! xx Amy
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It does make me wonder why humans were ever allowed access to the planet. It is a privilege we are largely not worthy of.
We share thoughts don’t we?
You gave me a link to an article; I believe it was violence against women.Would you resend?
Why indeed!!! An outrage!! One of so, so many!
Yes. One of way, way too many indeed!
I was about to “Like” this and realized I don’t like it at all!!! Just incredible..on another note, have you been reading about the panther population recovering?
I don’t believe it for a single minute.
Nearly every day in my email is the story of yet another one hit and killed by a car.
It is most likely to get the public off of their backs about Drilling in their habitat.
Very sad about this. Truly awful. For shame.
Yes Karen, it was so sickening to watch on the News.
“Unbelievable” is certainly the word! We should all email the WFTV newsroom and complain about this madness and perhaps the Lake Tech Institute of Public Safety and the Sheriff’s office too!! I have supported some petitions recently against European animal institutions that had euthanized perfectly healthy animals, seemingly out of nothing more than convenience! It is appalling that shooting the gator was seen as ‘the way to deal with the problem’ at a so-called training event!
Agreed.
The most often chosen method of handling these wildlife encounters by of our state wildlife authorities has become unbearable for many of us.
Well, I left my message for WFTV … don’t know what they’ll make of it but we can but try. I was pleased to see this tv channel had followed up on the story and the Lake County reporter said he had been inundated with messages from people who were upset about the death of the alligator in these circumstances.
Very cool.
Which reporter did you talk to?
I left a message via the E-Mail WFTV Newsroom link on the website.
http://www.wftv.com/s/about/contact/
The reporter who seemed to be collating the story, especially about how many people were upset/angry at the killing of the gator was called Mario Boone, but as I couldn’t see a contact email for him I just went for the newsroom instead. In the report he was saying he’d had loads of messages on his Facebook wall – I’m not on Facebook so I couldn’t find him that way.
Thank you for getting involved.
He is fairly new, but seems to be doing a really great job so far!
I would really like to see the comments others have made, will go look for him on FB.
Man’s first response is always, kill. Kill. Kill. And then, kill some more. One day, this will catch up with us. Oh wait, that day’s here.
It is indeed!
It’s like when some irresponsible person climbs into a polar bear exhibit in a zoo and gets mauled and they end up killing the polar bear! Seriously?? Um, who was the idiot in that case? I say hang a picture of the person outside the exhibit to remind people that these are still wild animals doing the best they can under the circumstances. I volunteered at a zoo in NY state because I was against zoos, until I saw what a good zoo can do to give back in the way of education and species survival programs. But people continue to be ignorant and keep blinders on about habitats, extinction and the true nature of these creatures.
There is still a lot of negative public reaction to this here.
Many people are outraged that it happened.
This is becoming a fatal routine that always ends badly for wildlife.
Trigger happy. There were much better ways to deal with the situation. How worthless animals lives are to some.
– sonmicloud.
You are so right.
It could have never even happened, had the Gator’s mouth been taped as in the picture above.
They referred to this as a “Gator Attack” on the report. Why let the facts get in the way of a sensational sentence? Can you imagine how this gets reported if the Alligators had a news network? Oh wait, they do… called “Walking with the Alligators.”
I like sarcastically named blogs so I searched out a link to your friend’s blog http://thisisfloridayouknow.wordpress.com/
Thank you for the good laugh.
I am writing about an ugly Company right now and really needed it!
Oh and BTW, that “friend” has been my room mate for the past 15 years~
Common sense must be in short supply in Florida. I lived in Palatka and then Daytona for six years and my father took us all over the swamps and taught us about the snakes, gators and other things to take care around. We visited a Seminole family whose children, much younger than I. played with the gators, running and jumping over them as in a game. After we left, Daddy said we should not play with gators because we did not have any experience with them like they did. That was common sense Daddy din’t need to tell me.
Another black bear’s been ‘euthanized’, near Panama City this time – just saw this news story on one of our national UK papers – it linked to the Northwest Florida Daily News story. When I took a look at that story I see the Northwest Florida Daily News are also running a poll: “Should Florida authorize bear hunting to thin the population of black bears?”
When I voted I saw the results are currently running at 120 YES, 141 NO. This is the link, Donna –
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/
Thought you would want to see it/share it if you’ve not already
Thank you for this Peggy.
No, I had heard nothing about this very sad story.
But, I will not be writing about it. I am very sick today and trying to rest in bed.
The terrible story is here:
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/local/shalimar-bear-euthanized-second-bear-struck-by-car-1.340131
I did vote in the POLL.
I have spoken with the man in charge several times and he assures me that there will NOT be a hunting season for Black Bears unless their numbers increase dramatically.
But, we shall see, when it comes to our wildlife here, I trust no one.
I am sorry to hear you are sick today, Donna – hope you feel a bit better soon.
Yes, it is certainly another very sad story – and it was even worse than I’d first thought as evidently TWO bears have died within 24 hours! I really hope they stay strong against the idea of hunting the bears.
This last few days we have once again been fighting for the bees! The agri-chemical corporation, Syngenta, are making an “emergency” appeal to the UK government to allow them to over-ride the Europe-wide ban and use neonicotinoids on nearly 800 square miles of UK farmland. You are so right, when it comes to wildlife we can take nothing for granted!