[Battlebasset]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

Spanish Lakes Fairways has removed four alligators from the retention pond where a woman was killed by an alligator earlier this week.

I called The Villages when I first got here and reported an alligator that was in a nearby retention pond. They said that they won't do anything unless it attacks either a person or an animal. So apparently, they get one attack or kill before anyone does anything about them.

Predators are cleared from lake near retirement community after woman savaged to death by reptile | Daily Mail Online

I have a retention pond behind my house. It was the feature that sold me on my place - open space behind us and water. There is a three foot retention wall with a roughly 3 foot+ vertical bar fence on top of it. So no real worries about a gator getting into my back yard.

All that said - I never put my small dog in the backyard without me there. She could easily squeeze between the lateral bars. And I never go into the pond area. We saw a gator the first month we were here, and we almost see one daily now. It's fun to watch them lay around on the bank, and when the water is low, there is a sandbar near the drainage pipe he/she likes to lay on. It's almost like he is on top of the water. Our guests love it. The most I had in NJ were stupid deer that destroyed my landscaping and made my yard look like cow pasture.

Stay away from the ponds, use common sense, and you won't have a problem.