Anita’s Blog – Don’t Feed The Alligators
- jjvanm
- Aug 10
- 7 min read
There was more fascinating information I wanted to write about the American alligator, Alligator mississippiensis, than was said in a 500-word article for the McAllen Monitor, published August 2, 2025. That article can be viewed at this link. https://www.stbctmn.org/post/alligators-a-healthy-fear-is-a-good-thing
Useful tips: Don’t swim at night. Don’t walk at night without carrying a light source. Don’t leave doors open. Don’t feed the alligators.
American alligators inhabit rivers, lakes, ponds, swamps, bayous, marshes and resacas from North Carolina to the Rio Grande in Texas. They tolerate salt water for only brief periods. That doesn’t mean you won’t encounter them on the beach.
Alligators can and do leave the water and roam on land, especially in the dark.
They hunt submerged, and they hunt on land, mostly at night.
They move on land between bodies of water.
Alligators are more active during cooler periods like early morning and late afternoon.
They will lie in wait near the water’s edge, often in grassy areas to hunt prey.
They travel significant distances on land, particularly during breeding season and when searching for new habitats.
Alligators may leave the water to find shelter or escape extreme temperatures.
They could be anywhere in their roaming range, including trees, stairs, walls, fences, porches, garages. *
Discovering an alligator in the resaca near the corner of our fishing dock and then watching its snout and eyes slinking through the water toward our bank has helped us in our landscaping considerations, and I must say, it’s put a different spin on how I check my moth sheet in the dark. I’ll start with that.
I use a headlamp instead of a flashlight, so my hands are free for photographing moths and other night flying insects attracted to the black light and moth sheet set up.
Now that I know a little about alligators from my research, I turn my headlamp on before I open the door. As soon as I step onto the porch and shut the door (so the cats don’t get out) I scan the patio, the yard, the dock and the water, looking for two glowing red orbs. Alligators’ eyes glow red when light hits them at night. I’m counting on that to be true.
In the absence of red orbs, I venture to wherever I’ve set up my moth sheet. Set up now is governed by safety – somewhere not close to the water nor near anywhere that might camouflage a sleeping, hunting, lying-in-wait alligator.
That brings me to our landscaping considerations. The previous owners of our property had planted a Montezuma cypress, Taxodium mucronatum, some years ago, at the edge of the water, next to the neighbor's property.
In July, we noticed the lower boughs of the cypress were shifting in the wind, dusting the ground. On the resaca side of the tree, the feathery branches dipped into the water. The spread was so great, a corner of the neighbor’s retaining wall, a triangular area of water and the tangle of tree roots along the bank were hidden. It was a lovely, peaceful, idyllic breezy summer scene – until the alligator nosed up to it. We now viewed that iconic setting as a perfect alligator haunt.
I had been tracking and photographing the alligator’s movements in the water one morning when it turned in my direction and kept coming toward our yard. I was stunned, rooted to my spot in the yard, in fact, where I’d been photographing it drifting in the water, parallel to the bank, and now, I could only gape at its progress, not believing it was really going to come up onto our yard.
I kept waiting for it to turn around. I was torn as to protecting life and limb or getting a really great photograph. Finally, the photographer’s instinct took over. I hesitantly took a couple of steps toward the alligator, briefly thinking, what am I doing? but soldiering on. Fortunately, I suppose, the sun must have glinted off my camera lens. A mere foot from the bank and the security of the cypress boughs, the alligator turned away and headed back toward the middle of the resaca and travelled on.
And that’s a good thing.
According to Javi Gonzalez, fellow Texas Master Naturalist and the naturalist educator at South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center and Alligator Sanctuary, alligators are fearful of humans and will retreat when approached. It’s a good thing the alligator retreated, it means it isn’t used to getting food from humans, Javi wrote in response to my e-mail. Don’t feed the alligator and tell all your neighbors not to feed it. If it gets used to people feeding it, then it poses a threat.
The next day, we pruned the cypress. Yes, in the heat of the summer even though they say it may kill a tree to prune in summer. The neighbors came over and helped. It took all morning. The tree is fine, no ill effects from stress. It’s healthy, it’s shapely, it hides nothing. It looks like the front of a Kindle-reader-at-rest, without the person.
As far as we can ascertain, our sometime visitor is between five and six feet long. We’re not going to feed it, that’s for sure. It hangs around in the early mornings for several days and then it’s gone again. Or perhaps we don’t see it. In a couple of weeks, it may likely be back.
*When you search Google for answers, Google will offer other questions you might not have thought about asking, like, “Can alligators climb stairs?” I would not have thought to ask that question because I would not have thought alligators climbed stairs – which calls to mind a communication theory I haven’t thought about for a while: You don’t know what you don’t know.
So, the short AI answer is, “Yes, alligators can climb stairs.”
There are a lot of incidents documented, especially in news reports and video clips from Florida, on the Internet. “Wildlife trappers and homeowners have reported seeing alligators on porches, second story balconies and even in stairwells. Alligators can navigate up and down stairs and even climb vertical fences and other obstacles. Access to food may be a motivation, find a mate or escape unfavorable conditions.” They can climb most inclines if they can get a good grip and pull themselves up, according to a promotional Kissimmee, Florida, Website, experiencekissimmee.com.
Alligators are found in only two countries: China and the United States; Mexico has no alligators although it is home to several species of crocodiles and caimans (small to medium-sized crocodilians). There is one species of crocodile in the United States: the American crocodile, Crocodylus acutus, which lives in coastal areas of South Florida and the Florida Keys.
Louisiana is the state with the most alligators with an estimated population of 2 million; Florida comes in second with 1.3 million and Texas is third, with about 500,000. A recent Web article by Colby Maxwell for A-Z Animals ranks alligators in the 10 U.S. states where they are considered native at this link: https://a-z-animals.com/animals/alligator/alligator-facts/alligator-population-by-state/
Here's another interesting top-10 stat: A-Z Animals updated a post on their site in July 2025, by Trinity Londos, listing the top 10 most alligator-infested rivers in Texas, here: https://a-z-animals.com/animals/alligator/alligator-facts/alligator-infested-rivers-in-texas-2/
So, if there are alligators in the Rio Grande, why aren’t there alligators in Mexico, I asked Google. Here are two answers: “While alligators are present in the Rio Grande on the U.S. side, their presence in Mexico is not as well-documented. Reported sightings on the Mexican side are sparse.” “American alligators are not native to Mexico, and their natural range does not extend into the country,” according to A-Z Animals. “The Rio Grande serves as a natural boundary, and while alligators can cross it, they are not a naturally occurring part of the Mexican ecosystem.”
Don’t swim at night. Alligators have skin sensors that are sensitive to vibration and can detect anything entering the water or disturbing the surface of the water nearby. When prey gets close enough, the alligator moves with startling speed. (source: animals.howstuffworks.com) They themselves can slide into the water silently without making a splash.
The alligator deathroll is not just for fiction stories. It is a specific predatory behavior exhibited by alligators and crocodiles, where they spin rapidly while gripping prey they can’t swallow whole. The spinning motion helps them tear off chunks of flesh or dismember their prey.
It also is a way to pull the prey underwater and drown it, especially if it’s a larger animal.
Alligators can hunt and kill prey underwater, but they cannot swallow it there. I liked the way it was explained in How Alligators Work/animals.howstuffworks.com: “Once an alligator captures something, it will hold it in its mouth and drag it underwater to drown it. It must then get back above water to swallow it – otherwise, the alligator's stomach and lungs would fill with water. Using its incredibly powerful jaws (which are able to exert up to 2,000 PSI), an alligator will break bones or crush shells (in the case of turtles) to create a chunk of flesh that can fit down its throat. Then it will raise its head, open the palatal valve and swallow the piece whole. An alligator can digest anything it swallows – muscle, bone, cartilage, are all digested completely.”
Because of what alligators eat, their teeth wear down. They have about 76 to 80 teeth in their mouths; small replacement teeth grow under each mature tooth and cycle continuously. As they ground down, they are replaced up to 50 times throughout their lives. An alligator can go through 3,000 teeth in a lifetime. Most sources pull up that information.
Alligators reach sexual maturity between 10 and 12 years old or when they grow to six feet long.
In Texas alligators are mostly inactive from mid-October until early March.
March, alligators seek mates.
April, courtship begins, and females build nest.
May and June, mating occurs
Late June to early July, female deposits eggs in a nest she has built of local vegetation up to 6 feet across and several feet high. She lays between 35 and 50 eggs in the center of this mound, allowing the decaying vegetation and sunlight to provide the warmth necessary to incubate the eggs. They incubate for about 65 days.
August and September, as they hatch, the female will assist in digging them out. They will stay near the female for up to two years.
Source: TPWD online fact sheet. https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/species/alligator/index.phtml
If you ask Google what an alligator’s nest looks like, photos pull up that are amazingly similar to this mystery mound in a farm field near a Los Fresnos, Texas, resaca that I've often wondered what it is and why it was not plowed under when the rest of the field was. I'm not saying it's an alligator's nest, but you never know.
There are rules and regulations for hunting alligators in Texas outlined at this link: https://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdoor-annual/regs/animals/alligator
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