On my blog today, I blogged about a local case in which two young men tortured and beat an alligator, then ate it. They did so in an area where hunting isn't allowed (in a national wildlife refuge no less), and they didn't have an alligator harvest permit. They have pleaded guilty.

A portion of the news article about the case mentioned that some people wrote the judge to request a harsh punishment for the two men because the alligator was "semi-tame."

If you know anything about the American alligator, they are never tame! Alligators are predators with brains the size of a walnut. They rely on instinct.

What "semi-tame" means in reality is that alligator was fed by people. Despite warning signs up at the area where the alligator was killed, warning people not to feed alligators there, people fed that alligator anyway. And I believe it was just a matter of time before that alligator was killed, legally, because alligators that are fed get too used to people -- they start to associate people with food -- and then they start going after people themselves. When alligators become a nuisance in Florida, a trapper comes out, and if the alligator is big enough, it is killed. (Also, any alligator that kills a person is killed if it can be found.)

I have seen with my own eyes people ignoring "do not feed" signs, feeding raccoons, ducks, geese, and yes, alligators. In one place, a state park that backed up to an urban area full of restaurants, diners would walk across the street to give raccoons their leftovers despite warning signs saying people would be fined $500 if caught. The raccoons were used to the leftovers and stood around in a pack, waiting for a handout. I saw one man give a raccoon a lit cigarette. The raccoon took it, thinking it was food, but it got burned instead. That instance really showed me that feeding animals makes them too trusting of people -- and because some people want to do animals harm, trusting people is a bad thing. A few months later, raccoons at the park were euthanized because they had become such a "nuisance." If people hadn't been feeding them, there wouldn't have been a reason for their nuisance behavior, and they would have kept on living at the state park.

In another instance at a different local park, people routinely fed the geese there bread and other "people food." Geese approached people when they saw them, because they knew people = food. When a little boy was bitten by a goose at the park, the mother sued the municipality. But it was really the fault of every person who had ever given a goose something to eat.

Through my site, people have e-mailed me to tell me about sandhill cranes that neighbors had poisoned because the birds were pecking at their pool screen enclosure or doing other property damage. But the birds were just asking for their handout. They had learned people liked to give them food. What they had unlearned was that people can be dangerous.

Whenever people start feeding wildlife -- and no, I'm not talking about putting out seeds in your backyard bird feeder -- it's a raw deal for the critters. The animals don't get the food they are supposed to eat. They may even stop looking for that food in favor of handouts, which aren't as nutritionally rich. They become too trusting of people -- some of whom will take advantage of them and do them harm. And some animals will ultimately die for losing their natural fear of people.

If we love wildlife, one of the best things we can do for them is to not ever feed them. Let them live their natural lives. Be happy that they run from you and are afraid of you when you spot them, because that fear helps them survive. And help spread the word that feeding wildlife is a bad thing.