Oh my goodness, Teresa! I just read your thread:

http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/gen...-attack-2.html

All your babies surely realized your state of mind and were there for you, too. I don't know how I missed your thread last year. I am so glad everything worked out okay. Very scary!

Scooter never goes outside when it's dark, just getting dark or just getting light. That's when he uses his potty pads. We "supposedly" have an alligator in a retention pond about a half a block away. I don't know anyone who has seen it except a neighbor who is a little on the strange side. I have seen quite a few very large gopher tortoise. The law says that no one is to handle a gopher tortoise and one must have permission to relocate the reptile. Well.......I hate to tell the Fish and Game guys but we have to "relocate" these tortoise quite often because they find themselves in the middle of a busy street. I guess the government guys want us to write for permission to move them out of harms way from the cars. Dumb government.

Yeah, the parents kick the "kids" out of their territory by late summer, so probably just the parents left in your neighborhood. They'll stick around as they are monogamous & mate for life. They also have great nesting site fidelity if they've had success raising young to fledge.

At least you know what to plan on! :D

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? :rolleyes::p:D

Oh, and yes...we move them out of the streets and into the woods here, too...qualified or not. :rolleyes: 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! :eek::confused: I don't think they had any idea what was in the bag! :rolleyes::p:D

We have something we call a snapping turtle up here. They hang out in the various ponds that are dotted around the area. They can be deadly and have hurt a lot of kids and animals. Once they clamp down on someone the only way to get loose is to cut the head off. No one is supposed to touch them but I think it is more for the people's protection than the turtles. When it rains they seem to think every place is their territory. I wish the government would clean them out instead of just telling us not to touch them!:rolleyes: Not nearly as bad as an alligator but can cause a lot of issues with kids and pets. A lot of ducks and geese have lost feet because of them, too. That kind of critter I would not mind seeing the end of.

Those snappers are vile varmints! I remember those from living in southern LA.

...It does seem that governments do the opposite thing that we think they should, doesn't it...? ;):p:D

Oh yes...OK has two (2) kinds of snapping turtle, a Common Snapping Turtle, and an Aligator Snapping Turtle that is 15-25 inches long. OK actually has something like 17 different turtle species that are native there...some are land turtles, and some are water turtles. There are three (3) types of poisonous snakes, tarantulas, scorpions, etc., too.

I have experience with snapping turtles, too...mostly making sure NOT to get my fingers in their way and then putting them in boxes and relocating them out of the reach of us children...like, way out in the woods somewhere...away from domestic neighborhoods. The ones that wanted to live near/with us were a type of box turtle/terrapin and very docile, but if they did catch your finger, it still hurt...the difference being they could be convinced to let go or you could pry their mouths open where the Snapping Turtles are not so inclined to do so. :rolleyes:

The snappers we have up here get really big. They can stick their neck out quite far, like up to a foot depending on their size. They have a huge hooked beak that does a lot of damage when it grabs something and apparently they have jaws of steal that don't let go. You would never want to get near one of them because of the fact that they have such long necks. They will lay in the mud on the edge of a pond unseen and wait for some poor unsuspecting critter.

Wow!!! But all the great wisdom the government can come up with is that you just shouldn't touch...err...something hidden in the mud a foot away...that you couldn't see until it was hanging off your toe, finger, etc.? Aaarrrggghhh! :2omg:

Not that I'd ever want to...:rolleyes:

Oh my gosh, I just remembered a story I read about a soft shell turtle biting a cat. The poor kitty had to have several toes amputated.

:eek::eek::eek: Poor kitty!

I appreciate your post and thanks for sharing your stories. I wish I could get some nice photos too. I also want to share you this, last week, a Florida woman hit an owl with her Ford Expedition SUV. Incredibly, she found it unharmed the next day at the rear of the grille of her SUV, after a 60 mile journey. And it was only one of two such stories that surfaced this week in the automotive press.