Nate vs. the Gator

Today, one of my mates here, Stephen, handed me a Hoya 72 mm polarizing filter (a cheapie)for my camera and said to try it out. Very excited about this, I proceeded to attach it to my lens and at 3:30 I grabbed my other mate, Greg, and went for a walk on campus to find a Gator or two.

Well, find one we did, about a 6 footer. (Campus will let them get to about 8ft before they remove them, and I have to say, an 8ft alligator is pretty huge!) Upon finding the gator, we happily proceeded to take pictures. After adjusting the polarizing filter and composing the next shot I heard a "PLOP" followed by some splashing as the Gator quickly moved over to see what I had dropped. You guessed it, Steve's filter dropped off the lens and fell into about 60cm of water. Boy, did I feel like an idiot.

You can see the filter above the Gator's head

I went back to the lab, got a magnet and some string in the vain hope that the filter was made of something remotely magnetic. No luck, as I had expected, the filter holder was made of brass.

Plan #2. My supervisor, who loves Gators, proclaimed that he would go in and get it. We walked out to see it, and while walking he asked me, "So how big is it?" I told him it's the 6 footer (there are 3 in our local stream at work, a 2ft, 6ft and an 8ft that I haven't seen for a long time). When we got there, there was quite a crowd of new and old students, staff and passers by looking at the Gator. On the way back, Kevin was giving me excuses like, "well, I don't want to make a spectical" and "I don't want to get my sneakers wet"... whatever.

The same Gator taking a snap at a Soft Shell Turtle - His jaws are open too!

Plan #3. I called Stephen telling him what had happened and he laughed telling me that the filter was a freebie, given to him long ago and not to worry about it. I wasn't about to give up though, I told him that I was going to come back at 7 when there were less people around and try again. I had a search around the testbed and found just the right thing. A sampling cup attached to a 10ft pole. 7pm came around and I met Steve back at work. Tooling up, we walked back to the Gator. With no one around, I put the cup into the water and started to maneuver the filter into the cup. Out of nowhere I caught a glimpse of something swimming towards us in the water - the Gator was back! He was so quick that he even got a chomp off at the cup! LOL! He was mad that we dare mess around in his territory. I tried in vain to get the filter a few more times, each time the gator would snap at the cup or hiss at us. Frustrated at the stupid thing, I gave him a little love tap on the head with the pole end of the sampling cup tool. Obviously this wasn't going to work, and it was decided that we needed a smarter approach. We figured that if Stephen kept the Gator occupied with a hoe that we had brought along at the other end of the pond, I would have a chance at the filter, and thats what we did.

We got the gator to go for a stick thrashing in the water, while I pushed the filter into the silt and scooped it with the cup. Mission successful! To celebrate I gave the Gator another love tap on the head and we went on our merry way.

Nate:2
Gator:1

The things I do to keep you entertained...