The first time I heard of "Florida Man", I thought that shit was made up. Now I'm incredibly fascinated (and perhaps a bit scared) by it.

Inland coastal Alabama, same deal. It's great to know how to catch turtles, snakes and lizards with my bare hands. Doesn't come up much while developing software but it definitely balanced out the Super Nintendo time growing up.

Native Floridian here as well. Same, but I would never swim down into a submerged car to investigate it. They're usually far too disgusting and too deep down. There was a submerged car in a canal where I grew up, I used to use it as a landmark for fishing all the time. It's probably still there, who knows, there could be a body.

> The vast majority of ponds, especially community ponds, do not have gators.

The need for this qualification on your statement really isn't helping. /s

Yea, local sterotypes tend to be that way, Boston is actually a really nice city with (mostly, except the crazy insulated catholics) pleasant people.

They are retention ponds, it’s necessary to create areas where water can drain into.

A large part of Florida is the combination of coastal and at sea level.

People want to live there, so they actively and continuously drain the swamp and build wherever possible.

Sea level rise is posing some expensive problems for them, obviously.

They dig the pond and use the dirt as fill to build houses on at a higher level than sea level.

1) dig pond for drainage, retention, and fill dirt

2) use fill dirt to raise land for houses so they are above flood levels

3) sell houses with "waterfront views"

imagine the smell and mosquitoes

Florida has unusual issues. The groundwater isn't very far below the surface and you basically can't have basements there. Some parts of it are swamp and it has a lot of karst that is prone to sink holes.

(Off the top of my head -- so anyone more knowledge, feel free to nitpick that to death. Alternately, anyone desperate to pick a fight and not knowledgeable enough, feel free to google my remark to within an inch of its life.)