Training Day 3: Update

The residents of Bald Head Island love their golf and demand a great course, known fact. Another known fact, all of the world's best golf courses also have water hazards. A lesser known fact, water hazards in the coastal mid-Atlantic region make great homes for a rather mean-spirited and short-tempered reptile known as the Alligator. Why is this important? As an intern here at the BHIC, part of my job occasionally is to go out onto Bald Head's favorite golf course and find those grumpy buggers with a flashlight on steroids (massive spotlight hooked up to a car battery). Pretty sweet eh? Anyways, just got back from one of my patrols counting the number of gator we could find on the course, over 14 tonight alone! They ranged in size from a little baby that was about a foot long to a gargantuan 11 footer on the last hole. So cool, especially because the stars were were out in full force, there was only a slight breeze to keep the bugs away and the island is silent at night. To make things even better, on one of the last holes we were doing we ran into a large male who didn't look to happy. As we shined the light on him to try and gauge his size, he quickly submerged and disappeared from view. Thinking nothing of it, we turned the light off and started to record what we had seen. Suddenly from behind us on a bank we heard a loud popping noise and a huge hiss. To say that I was terrified that my ankle was about to become the brunch of an angry reptile would be an understatement. To make matters worse, the intern next to me screamed so loud that my ear drum almost fell out. Was it a gator that scared us so badly? Not at all, also included on all world-renowned golf courses are remotely-timed sprinklers. Damn sprinklers. Goodnight gang.