I was thinking the same thing. At least you know the gators are there! Rattlers are usually so well camouflaged that you don't even see them until you're already way too close for comfort, and you hear that 'buzz'.
I'm headed to Myrtle Beach this weekend, from Iowa. I'm sure I'll see some gators. The prospect of gators doesn't bother me. My wife won't be happy to see them, however. She'll be scared chitless.
In the water, they're deadly. Don't go after errant balls... especially if you can't see in the water. They like to ambush you... they'll use golf balls as bait.
One of the courses here (Redlands Mesa) has signs in the rocks saying be careful snakes in the area. Needless to say I take plenty of balls with me when I play that course.
Yeah snakes are bad boogie. I was up in St George with friend golfing. We hit our 150 approach shots on to the green. We saw something near the flag stick which thought a piece of clothing. Once we got close enough, we saw it was a rattler. We left our balls on the green, and called it a bogey 1.
One of the courses we play is built in amongst the rocky desert mountains/canyons along the Colorado River. They have signs advising of snakes, and they ain't kidding - we see at least one rattlesnake almost every time we play there.
A substantial percentage of rattlesnake bites come from people screwing around with them. I'd imagine it's much the same (or maybe even more so) with gators. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
