The now viral video was originally posted to Facebook by the Valencia Golf and Country Club in Naples, Florida, and shows a big, beefy, and remarkably long-legged gator headed into a small pond.
Despite this reptile being so large it almost looks fake, Tyler Stolting, the first assistant golf professional at the course, told the Tampa Bay Times that the gator is in fact real, and it was spotted at the 17th tee around 2 p.m. on Wednesday.
Seeing a massive chungus like this on a golf course isn’t that uncommon, especially in Florida. Gators love Florida golf courses. The links are a near perfect habitat for gators – there are water hazards, plenty of birds to eat, and unless management calls in a professional, it’s unlikely they’ll be hunted or trapped. Plus, Florida has more golf courses than any other state, and people are always around, phone in hand, ready to capture a video of a Godzilla-sized gator strolling across a fairway.
It’s unclear exactly how big this gator is, but it wouldn’t be at all shocking if it was a near-record size. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the record for largest gator captured was a 14-foot, 3.5-inch male from Lake Washington in Brevard County. The heaviest gator was a 1,043-pound (13 feet, 10.5 inches long) male from Orange Lake in Alachua County.
This story first appeared on our sister paper’s site, Creative Loafing Tampa.
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This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2020.
