Escaping the Jaws of Death: A Trip to the Circle B Bar Reserve
Another set of photos to make you wish you were in Florida! Plus, a tale that may make you want to wait until alligator mating season is over to book your own visit down south.
While in Winter Haven, Florida, my cousins and I took a trip to the Circle B Bar Reserve. The Circle B is a preserved state park which was once a working cattle ranch. The park is teeming with Florida wildlife. While we were there we saw a 20+ alligators, two snakes, several birds, and an unidentified furry thing that might have been some sort of fox, but no one can say for sure. (Also, it jumped back into the brush before I could photograph it.).
It is clearly mating season for the alligators, and their mating calls were bellowing all around us. It was a little bit tense, as we were worried about how close the alligators were, and if they might decide to pass over the narrow trail from one lake to the other. The gators were some of the largest ones my cousin, Robin, had ever seen. Ever the fearless and naïve New Yorker, I loved the thrill of danger being close at hand. My cousins, however, we’re right to be scared. As my little cousin David put it, “You’re like the tourist in Jurassic Park.” Me: “The one who gets eaten?” David: “Yep, that’s the one.”
I’m now home in New York, and Robin just emailed me to say that the Circle B has been temporarily closed because of the fear of the gators getting too close. This is my tale of the escaping near death in Florida.
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Kelly, those are beautiful pictures. It was dangerous to be there during aligator mating season, one could quickly lunge out and grab a child!! I remember growing up on a lake in Lake County and many dogs disappeared that way. I love all of the wild natural beauty of Florida, too bad so many greedy developers want to build more and more developments that encroach on the natural beauty of our very special state!!