My daily commute takes me across Mobile Bay. There are two routes, the long bridge which is part of I-10, and the causeway, a combination of raised roadway and bridges. I like the latter, which is much more scenic and leisurely. Most of it is only a few feet above water level. (Here is what it looked like shortly after Tropical Storm Cindy a few years ago.) For years my wife has reported seeing the occasional alligator in the water while crossing the causeway, but she is more observant than I am, and I had never seen one till yesterday. At a particularly low place, where a lot of people fish, there he was, thirty or forty feet from the bank--just a couple of dark shapes in the water, the first one the top of his head, the second his back: something like this. (I seem to be falling into my wife's habit of using the masculine pronoun for every critter, bug, or varmint of questionable intentions, a practice which may or may not say something about her view of the human male.)

I'd guess he was in the range of six feet or so, large enough to do some harm. Alligators are really not nice creatures at all. My animal-loving brother brought a baby one home from a Florida vacation once. By the time it was a foot long it was seriously unpleasant.

(I have no interesting reflection on this, I just thought it was cool.)