One last update on the Lewisville Lake alligators for the time being… A quick visit allowed me the chance to see both alligators together, if only for a brief time before sunset.
One alligator was mostly out of the water when I arrived and that afforded me the opportunity to get a quick picture of nearly its full length just before it submerged.
As you can see in the picture below, only the last section of the alligator’s tail is out of frame. The row of scales along the top edges of the tail still have not converged yet, so that would indicate that as much as 40% of the tails length is not visible in this picture.
If you suppose that the alligators head is approximately twelve inches in length, and you account for the portion of the tail that is not visible, then you can estimate this alligators total length to be slightly over six feet long.
That is a good sized gator!
From what I’ve read this size would suggest that the age of these alligators somewhere between 6 and 10 years old. Either way they have been around for a long time. What is not clear is just how long they have been at their current location.