There are lots of good things about living on a golf course. Like how you don't have to worry about getting caught in traffic on the way to your tee time or how you don't have to wait for golf coverage on the television in order to see shots curling onto the green...they're right out the back door. There's the occasional downside but mostly having all the green grass that someone else mows just beyond the edge of our yard is a good thing. It is indeed a nice place to live.
And apparently the word of just how nice it is has spread for the neighborhood has a new resident. Well, not the neighborhood exactly...more like the golf course itself. As in a three-foot alligator.
Alligators on golf courses aren't that unusual, especially in Florida, but we've never had one before. In fact, sitings of any alligators in this immediate area are pretty rare. Years ago they caught a big one down on the highway that runs from Pensacola to Milton but that's right at the mouth of the Escambia River. It's marshy with lots of little bayous off the river...just the kind of place you'd expect to see alligators. We're three or four miles inland from there.
We have, however, had lots of rain lately. We'd love to share some of our 7+ inches of year-to-date surplus with some of those who are in dire need of it if we could...I just haven't figured out how to email rain clouds. So the theory is that with all this rain, young Mr. Alligator made his way from upstream Escambia River and down Beal Creek, a small waterway that meanders through part of the golf course. In fact, the creek enters the golf course property at Hole No. 6 and that's just where the golfers spotted him the other day.
In golf terms creeks, lakes and the like are termed hazards and there are special rules that govern what you can and cannot do if you hit into them. Used to be that snakes were the concern when you hit into the ditch on No. 6; with an alligator, now it really is a hazard!
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