Alligators in October: Can You Say Brumation?

 I wasn't thinking about alligators when my wife and I purchased a home on Lake Mary in southern Mississippi two years ago.  

If alligators lived in my new neighborhood, I assumed they would hang out in nearby Lake Foster, a lake ringed by cypress swamps and aquatic plants. My property was clear of marshland, presumably no habitat for an alligator.

Anyway, wasn't Wilkinson County, Mississippi too far north for alligators? After all, it can become bitterly cold on Lake Mary Road in winter--surely too frigid for cold-blooded creatures to survive.

Therefore, I was surprised when I saw a six-foot alligator sunning on my dock the summer after I settled into my Lake Mary home. I assumed it was an anomaly. Alligator hunters bagged him during the first weekend of Mississippi's alligator hunting season, and my lakefront home was rendered alligator-free.

Or so I thought. A few days ago, my five-year-old grandson reported seeing gators hanging around our neighbor's pier. Mom investigated and discovered six small alligators and one larger one lounging in the shallows.

Were the little ones siblings? Was the large one their mama? Do female alligators have maternal instincts like feral hogs, which will kill you if you mess with their piglets?

Anyway, it's mid-October. Why weren't those alligators hibernating?

I did a little Google research and learned that alligators don't hibernate. Rather, they bruminate, which means their metabolism slows in the colder months, they become lethargic, and stop eating.

These alligators are just another bit of evidence that Lake Mary, Mississippi, is unlike the idyllic Golden Pond of New England, where Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn spent their peaceful summers, troubled only by infrequent visits from Jane.

We've got feral hogs, venomous snakes and spiders, and Asian carp that leap from the water and occasionally injure boaters. We are visited by annual spring floods. Deer run across Highway 24 at night and collide with passing cars. And we've got alligators--at least seven.

Perhaps that is just as well. After all, it's a dangerous world.  We need to look up from our cellphones from time to time and scout about for hidden dangers.

On Golden Pond: At least we don't have alligators.