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The sign said do not feed the alligators. Underneath someone had taken a Sharpie and written, “your leg.”

Do not feed the alligators your leg. Good advice. I spent a little time on the Internet trying to find out about the Conecuh National Forest before our trip. You know what it’s like, you start out with a simple search and one thing leads to another which leads to another which leads to another, and before you know it, you’ve got way too much information. I knew I had way too much information when I read about the man who had his leg ripped off by an alligator at the Open Pond Recreation Area. The Open Pond Recreation Area was where we set up our base camp.

Everything you read about alligators tells you something like, “Attacks on humans are rare.” I’m sure that’s what the one-legged man thought. Everything you read also tells you that alligators are “carnivorous” and “opportunistic” feeders. In other words, they’ll eat anything that gets too close as long as it’s meat. Gators will lurk at a water’s edge and can lunge about five feet to snatch an unsuspecting prey. That prey includes fish, turtles, birds, and even other alligators. And guess what? They enjoy a tasty mammal. You know, “mammals,” those hairy, warm-blooded animals like squirrels, raccoons, beavers, dogs, cats and me. Gators are America’s largest reptiles, and they are not considered “large” until they get to be seven or eight feet long. They can get up to fourteen feet or more and weigh a thousand pounds. When they get that big, they like to attack their prey by grabbing a leg or an arm and spinning until they rip it off.

Most alligator attacks happen in south Florida. Experts say that’s because humans keep moving into the gators’ natural habitat. The gators learn to adapt. Some have been seen climbing fences to get at pets. I couldn’t help wondering how the Conecuh alligators have adapted to people setting up nylon tents in their habitat around Open Pond.

Maybe I worry too much. According to what I read, gators get sluggish and don’t eat when temperatures get down around seventy degrees. When it starts to get cold, they burrow a hole in the ground and crawl in. They lie still and quiet until it warms up again. That’s because they are reptiles, and reptiles are cold blooded. Cold blooded animals have their body temperature regulated by the temperature of the world around them. When the temperature outside goes down, the temperature inside the gator goes down. When the temperature outside goes up . . . you get the idea. Seventy degrees or so seems to be temperature where they slow down to the point they don’t eat. Here at the Conecuh in early April the temperature is what? Yep. Seventy degrees. So are the gators waking up? Are they hungry after dozing in a hole in the ground for four months? Have they been dreaming of that first springtime meal? Perhaps a tasty, warm-blooded mammal?

No. Not to hear my mother the herpetologist tell it. She says, “The alligators will not be active and feeding until temperatures reach above twenty-seven degrees Celsius and maintain that temperature over a period of days.”

For those of us who are not biologists, she meant to say, “The alligators will be out looking for something to eat when it gets into the eighties.”

Okay, this means I should not have to worry about alligators during the first week of April. Still, when I saw the sign that read,

Do not feed the alligators

your leg

I sort of missed my little sister. She’s smaller than me and not as fast.