it factored with us. i chose a home away from H20 not only due to gators/snakes, but also flooding concerns. now i know Village homes rarely flood out, but i'd still choose to be away from the waterside.

gators and TV
 

We have lived here 4+ years. A good piece of advice for ANYWHERE in FL is that if there is water, there is a gator. We have "ponds" close to us and have seen a gator more than once. We play golf and frequently see a gator in the water on along the water on the course. I've even had to bypass a hole because of a gator.

You just have to be aware. The further you are from water, the less likely you are to see one. The bigger the body of water, the bigger the gator. Don't walk along the ponds especially with you pet. If a golf ball goes in the water, think twice about retrieving it.

Termites are to be more likely than gaters near water.

My main concern with gators is that I work in my yard. I'm on my hands and knees or cleaning out foliage lots of times and would worry that a gator just may come up from behind me. It's hard to "be aware of your surroundings" when you are knee deep in yard work.

99.9% of the time, No. Generally they stay at or near good sized ponds/lakes. Also they are defensive animals,

They caught a gator in NYC the other day. That's sort of north.

Gators in ponds are fun to see. - the problem becomes when the Gator gets over 4 ft. The villages is a highly populated area with both humans and dogs. A person or even a medium-sized dog could POSSIBLY fight off a 4 ft alligator. But, IF the Villages BRASS allows gators bigger than 4 ft , they are just saying, "We don't mind LOSING a few dogs each year and maybe an arm or two".
........People can see LARGE gators at State and Federal wildlife areas or on a river canoe trip. Allowing BIG gators within the Village's boundaries is UNCONSIONABLE.
..........Maybe the residents would like The Villages to stock some nice, CUTE freshwater SHARKS (they exist) in our LAKES also!

I didn't say the dead lady did that, for all I know it could have happened in the daylight. The point is that Gators are MUCH more aggressive at night than during the day.
........ Personally, I did get stuck in a situation where I HAD to walk out of a swamp at NIGHT through gator-infested
water. I said earlier that I have NOT led a sheltered life. And at night a gator makes a sound like ......if you can imagine a frog as big as a car!
Note ::::::: It DID happen in DAYLIGHT.

That IS also good advice - that IS why you need to rent for 6 months before buying in order to get "the lay of the land".

A "local lady"? She lived 165 MILES away...

Facts Matter...

Care to cite where you came up with that "4 ft" rule?

I work in my yard too, perhaps not as much as you seem to, but I do like gardening. I have found a black snake coiled under a bush I was trimming. And bees or hornets in another bush, and two birds protecting their nest in another bush, the birds were aggressive! So now days I come out with a soapy spray and spray the bush first, everything moves away, and then I trim it. Never saw an alligator in the gardens at Mallory perhaps maybe ones that face the golf course. I wonder if bear spray would work on alligators? I never hear anybody mentioning it.

Just guessing, but I would NOT want to depend on bear spray, which is like pepper spray. Alligators are prehistoric creatures with small brains and tough lungs. I would tend to think that it would be less effective on them. And they have double eyelids or some such things (for those that pick at every detail even when I am just guessing.)

Well, that was just NAMING the PROBLEM.......Gators HERE have grown too BIG.......so that now they can THREATEN dogs and people as we have seen with the 85-year-old lady that experienced the TERROR of a hideous DEATH. I saw the video of her violent DEATH. It was like she was attacked by a Rhino or a ROGUE elephant or a man-eating tiger in INDIA.
.......Does the Villages want to be like a 3rd world country like INDIA or AFRICA?
.......People can still watch gators under 4 ft and enjoy them - and probably more of them if the over 4 footers were "REMOVED". People would LOSE nothing and gain the confidence of NOT being charged by a prehistoric MINDLESS killing MACHINE.
.....Watch the video .......IF you DARE!