Parental Guidance Suggested...

Over the years anyone who has accompanied our family to a zoo, a nature center or an aquarium may be passingly aware that some members of the group might have had an affinity for -- uh -- hmmm - "biology" had said member not gotten into grad school... At any rate the subject of today's blog is not the 3 new species of bird we encountered at the South Padre Island World Birding Center...it really falls more into the Spring Break category of sightings.  Now, if you are reading with your children, this would be a good time to distract them with some other more suitable entertainment because what follows is National Geographic on steroids.  We may well have missed our calling as nature documentarians and I'm pretty sure Wick, who was on video duty thinks I could get a job as one of those background narrators ala Sigourney Weaver on Discovery Channel's Planet Earth series.

We had barely stepped out onto the boardwalk when we noticed a rather LARGE alligator lying in the reeds:

 We took a few pictures and walked a couple more steps only to discover a second LARGE gator (that's what we call 'em here) lying in the water -- he didn't stay there long though.  With a twitch of the tail he went over to have a "discussion" with the reed laying gator.

Imagine our surprise when this didn't cause any kind of fight.  By this time, the two gators had collected quite an audience of senior citizen type tourists with cameras, floppy hats and binoculars.  Pretty much everybody including the alligator couple were pretty excited as the lovely couple swam down the inlet with privacy in mind...

Now unfortunately we didn't always have the best lighting and we did miss the moment when the boy gator arched his tail, lifted his head and with a loud bellow did the water jumpy thing with his back scale armor-stuff.  It made the water dance and jump around and was clearly pretty attractive to the girl gator.  But we think you'll get the idea:

During this phase, with everyone watching intently they are making every effort to figure it out.  People have collected from around the Center

Now in the next couple of videos they are really getting down to business and I think you'll agree that Beth's play by play commentary and "encouragement" really adds to the overall viewing experience:

I tell you - I can't think of a better way to spend the kid's inheritance than stranding around watching true life adventure stories.

Ahhh.....alligator love.....