Lions and Tigers and Boars. Oh my.

Today's walk brought even more than we had hoped for.  Part of what made us buy in to the Thousand Trails RV network was their philosophy of "preserves' which is what each campground is called.  They try to  save a lot of their land for natural beauty and hiking trails. 

 

As we walked along beside the river today, I spotted a large alligator close to the bank.  This one was actually about 10 feet long and scary enough that a lady with her two dogs quickly left when we pointed it out to her.  

Then about a mile later we were startled by movement in the woods followed by squeals from two wild boar, one black and one light brown, that looked to be about 40 pounds.  As they ran off into the woods, I saw two more smaller ones closer to us.  The smallest of the two seemed surprised to be left alone, kind of like "where did everybody go", and would have been our dinner if we were the predator type.  Definitely a little slow.  Being unfamiliar with wild boar, I thought the first two that ran off were the big ones.  Duh, not quite, because as I started to take pictures of the smallest one, I heard rustling to my left and saw what was certainly the mama boar.  She was  probably 5 feet long and easily 350 to 400 pounds.  Luckily for us, she must have thought that all her piglets were accounted for because she ran away from us.  We read later that they will usually retreat unless they feel threatened or their piglets are close.  Whew.  I only managed to get a a couple of shots of the slowest piglet, but we'll keep an eye out for the family as we walk the trail again.