Watching and Watched

On a recent trip to St. Marks, B and D went down a weedy path to the river's edge.

I stayed on my usual spot at the spill dam. Water was still pouring over, though not with the torrent of the last time we had been there. As B caught a pretty little bass,

I watched a pretty little gator. It was certainly no yearling, but it was small, as local gators go. It was floating just above the dam. The reflection of the reeds makes it look like it is afloat in a corduroy and rick-rack pond.

I watched as it swam a little toward the dam. 

Then it settled back down...

to watch.

The gator below was quite near the road, just around the corner from the visitor's center, in a flooded piney woods---a place we don't  usually see gators. But then that spot is usually high and dry. For the record, we ended up with 26 inches of rain in our little rain gauge at our house during the month of July.