This is the gator's fault. I was just a lad of 8 when my parents dragged me kicking and screaming out of the Connecticut woods and brought me to Florida, the new boom state. It was June, 1958. I didn't like Florida, it was hot, flat, buggy and had rained every day since we got here. So some of my new found friends, aka the neighborhood bullies, showed me a great way to pass the time. We would ride our bikes to the local pond and pelt the resident alligator with dirt clods. It was on a hot and muggy summer's day that fate would intervene into my new activity and change my life. My friends had all been grounded for one thing or another, which was not an uncommon occurance. I was alone and bored, so I decided to pay said gator a visit. I rode my bike to the pond and creeping slowly over a sand pile I spotted the reptile floating peacefully unaware about three feet from the shore. Perfect! As I crept over the pile with a fist full of dirt the sand gave way under my feet and plunged me tumbling into the pond. My backside hit the gator squarely on his head and I could feel his scaly back sliding under my legs. I was convinced that I would be dead in an instant, a victim of the creature I had tormented many times. Instant karma. Gator one, bratty kid zero. Instead, I suddenly found myself standing dazed, panting and soaking wet on my very own front porch. Having left my bicycle at the crime scene I had run the half mile home at near supersonic speed, confounding my parents who had given me up as terminally unmotivated. As I stood there shaking and dripping, carefully checking my fingers and toes, I began to feel quite proud of myself. After all, I had survived hand to hand combat with a fierce alligator in a wild Florida swamp and lived to brag about it!

Much later in life on a chilly evening in Tampa, I noticed my son had kept his hands in his pockets throughout the lenghty ride from his grandmother's house in Pinellas County. Upon asking to see what it was he was hiding he gave me a sheepish grin and produced a lizard. It had become lethargic in the cold air and although I didn't really think it liked Shaun's pocket or the car ride, it was content in absorbing the warmth. He put it down in our front hedge. I just smiled. He had inherited the love of living things from us. Now you know how lizards got to Hillsborough County.

It is my hope you can get some useful information from this site, that is if you consider this kind of information useful. If not, maybe just a smile. A smile can cure just about anything.