As I’m preparing to slide my kayak into the water, I’m hailed by the folks fishing from a pontoon boat. They want to know which way I’m going, because there’s a gator they might need to warn me about.

He’s not big, they say, but he’s nosey. They encountered him a day or two earlier and couldn’t fish anywhere near him. He kept trying to steal their bait. When a gator wants your bait, the alternatives aren’t good: Let him have it, or catch a gator.