I can see a gator living in a retention pond...IF...the retention pond is generally at least partially filled with water and there's some sort of food source nearby. If it dries out except during excessive rainfall, I'd be somewhat more skeptical. Where you live, there is a lot more water than where I live in Florida. There are plenty of gators...just not in this particular area...our ground is very water permeable in this area as opposed to all the clay basin areas that stay wet and/or swampy.
It is amazing how 'government'...people who may have been laundry folders and grocery baggers
yesterday...not that those are bad professions because we need
all skills in our world...but since government is made up largely of the hired, general public...
today, when they
become 'government' suddenly also become experts and
know more than those 'governed' by the 'hired, general public's' elected politicians and are then the
only ones
qualified to relocate gopher tortoises, isn't it?
Oh, and yes...we move them out of the streets and into the woods here, too...qualified or not.
That said, when I was a kid in OK, we had them...I'd guess you'd call them 'pets' but really we more 'rescued' them than had them as pets...and there were no laws related. We called them terrapins, though...but I think they were the same critter. They hibernated through the winter months, so we'd soak them for several days in the spring, then feed them food we kids would collect for them, then put them back outside in their natural habitat until fall so they could forage on their own. I don't think they ever left the property. In all the time we had them, only once did one of them not come around after the spring soaking. The one that didn't survive the winter hibernation, we put in a paper bag on the porch while we prepared his final resting place...and when no one was watching, someone SWIPED HIM!
I don't think they had any idea what was in the bag!