A nice day here in Florida today.  Was up pretty early and hung around the trailer checking email, reading the comics doing the crossword puzzle. In other words.... it was a normal morning for me. Took off a little bit after lunch and drove over to Alachua Sink which is part of the State Park here, but on the north side, closer to Gainsville.

   Spent a couple of hours out in the sun walking along the hiking trails and canal roads. There is a whole lot more water in the area than there was last year. Whole areas that were dryland pasture last year are now under 1'-2' of water. The waterways themselves held a lot more water and the plant life had exploded along all of them. This had the result of dispersing all of the alligators that had been all bunched together in a few smaller ponds last year.

    The gators are still there though and with the sun out like it was, there were a lot of them sunning themselves out on the banks along the water. In some cases the park staff had to come in and erect some temporary plastic web fencing in some spots because the gators were "right there" along the path. Not sure if the fence was to keep the gators from getting out to close, or stupid people from getting in to close. Either way it did allow for some nice close ups, although I was certainly aware of an escape route if needed.

    Lot's of birds out in the mashes also. Plenty of great blue herons of course but I also saw little blue herons, great white egrets, white ibis, wood storks, sand hill cranes and dozens of types of ducks and swimming birds. Two things of real interest to me were bird related incidents. The first one occurred while I was watching a little blue heron traipsing across the top of the swamp plants. I watched as it caught a small 5"-6" long snake of some kind. It caught it pretty much in the middle of it's length at first and then spent quite some time shaking it hard from side to side and beating it against the ground. It then ended up holding on to it at the tail end and did a bunch more of the shaking and smashing thing. The snake of course is twisting around and biting everything it can get a hold of including; the birds leg, and at one point, it's beak. Didn't even faze the bird which finally flipped it end for end and ended up with the snakes head in it's beak, and after getting the rest of it aligned with the beak.... slurped the whole thing down.... alive.... in less than a second. Which just goes to show you that it really isn't a Disney kind of world out there. Bambi dies's, and in some cases, gets eaten, so something else out there can live.

   The other case was this one wood stork that I watched for a little while. I had noticed it seemed to be having some trouble getting around for some reason. But as it was standing in the water I couldn't see any reason for it's unbalanced gait. It finally walked up on shore and I could see that the whole left foot was missing having been bitten off or broken off or frozen or some other type of trauma. So it had one foot to keep it above the mud and then the left one was like a spike that would just sink into the ground. That being said, the stork seemed to be doing okay having collected and eaten several snails while I was watching.

    So all on all it was a very nice couple of hours out in the sunshine. Went over to Chipoltle's afterwards because I felt in need of a Mexican food fix. Now I know Chipoltle's isn't really, Mexican food, but it's about as close as you can get east of the Mississippi River.

   Got back to the trailer and took a quick shower and got dressed for a night out at the theatre. So basically I just put on a pair of long pants. That was mainly because a cold front was suppose to go through the area tonight and drop the temperature down to about 40 degrees by morning. But when I got out of the play around 10:00 it was still 73 degrees even though it had already rained hard for nearly an hour.

   The play this evening, 'A Christmas Carol', was just a delight. This is the 35th time the Hippodrome Theatre has put it on and the character who plays Scrooge has been doing it for the last 25+/- years. I saw this one last year also while in the area, and it was fun at that time. Pretty much the same play, and many of the same actors this year, but it seemed better this year for some reason. Lot's of kid parts, lots of fun effects and even a nice story and moral to go with it all.

   I have some pictures from today's gator trip, but it is to late in the evening, or morning I guess, for me to try and load them up and annotate them. So perhaps tomorrow I can get to them.