For the past two decades, the alligator population in Baldwin County has been steadily growing. Eighteen miles north of Gulf Shores, Wes Moore’s 160-acre Summerdale property – home to Alligator Alley – now boasts more than 700 primitive reptile residents whose distant ancestors once roamed the planet with dinosaurs. While many were born into captivity at the site, others were “nuisance animals” relocated from around the Southeast.
“Alligators have a small brain and a large stomach, and that gets them into trouble,” says Moore, whose family has lived in Baldwin County for more than 150 years. “They have been known to borrow household pets or farm animals and not return them.”
Although rare, news of human attacks do occasionally spill onto media headlines, but Moore isn’t fond of the term “maneater.”…