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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

This is wonderful writing. I went to the University of Florida. Its recreational lake[1] (where students canoe, water ski, swim, etc) is infested with gators (the reptile kind, not the students, though there are lots of them too). No matter how many times I was told no students had ever been attacked there[2], swimming in that lake was still nerve-wracking.

[1] http://www.recsports.ufl.edu/lake-wauburg

[2] http://www.gainesville.com/article/20070614/SUNFRONT/7061403...

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Fellow Floridian and UF grad here - the gators are scary but honestly I won't swim in any lake in Florida due to the vast variety of amoebas, bacteria and waste. The gators are just a quick visual cue that you really shouldn't do it.

Yeah those brain eating amoebas are far scarier because you can't see them :-/

There are three kinds of water in Florida. A body of water here has either chlorine, salt, or gators in it. If you don't find the first two in it, it has the third.

I dunno man, when I was young my aunt showed us pictures of gators in her swimming pool.

Give that gator a margarita, and it would have all three.

I'd bet you find chlorine and gators together every now and then, at least briefly. Where I grew up in NC, gators were pretty common, and it was not unheard of for one to crawl up in somebody's back yard, locate their swimming pool, and take residence there.

They also liked to sunbathe on the asphalt road surface in the summertime, especially down near Boiling Spring Lakes. I was a 911 dispatcher for a while, and we got more than a few calls reporting a gator lying in the road, blocking Highway 133 near BSL. Good times...

My friends would go to central/north florida to canoe a river and get drunk. If they saw a gator they'd dive in and chase after it. None of the gators stayed to find out what the crazy loud pink monkeys wanted with them.

I was afraid of lakes when I was younger. Anywhere I couldn't see the bottom, I'd try to avoid.

At night you can take a flash light, shine it towards a lake, and you'll see all the eyes reflecting back at you.

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