Golfing using involves jokes, maybe a drink, clubs and sunshine. And in Florida you might see a reptile. Rarely are you seeing a giant gator eats huge fish at golf course! Earlier this week, a woman at the Seven Springs Golf and County Club in Trinity, Florida filmed a gigantic alligator walking across the course with a huge fish in its mouth.
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“Wow, what a sight,” Norma Respess said in the video. “I don’t want to get near you. I’m glad you got the fish.”
The Tampa Bay Times reports that Repress and her friend, brother, and sister-in-law were playing a round of golf at the club Thursday. Around noon, Repress’s brother shouted, “Look behind you! There’s a gator!”
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Repress grabbed her phone and started filming the huge reptile. Her friend was less calm—she reportedly threw her club in the air and sprinted away
“We’ve seen several gators,” Respess told the Times. “There’s quite a bit of them over there … but we’ve never seen anything like this. We will never forget it.”
Watch the full video below.
An estimated 1.25 million alligators live in the state among the 5 million across the southeastern United States, according to Defenders of Wildlife. Based on that number, alligators can be found anywhere there is water. That includes lakes, ponds, rivers, marshes, swamps and man-made canals. In fact, alligators are found in all 67 Florida counties, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says.
Basic tips to abide by while living among alligators and crocodiles in Florida include: never feed a gator, keep your distance if you see one, swim only in designated swimming areas during daylight hours and keep pets on a leash away from the water.
All alligator’s diets depend on their size and what’s available to eat, according to the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agriculture. This means they could eat, “anything including fish, frogs, birds, turtles, insects, snakes, small mammals, other alligators, white-tailed deer, wild hogs, and sometimes people’s pets.”
Did you know alligators typically swallow their meal whole? When its prey is too small to swallow whole, they stash its kill underwater, pinning it under a submerged log or anywhere it can be wedged for safekeeping, UF IFAS says.
