Luciano, they are extremely common and very dangerous! Any body of fresh water in Florida is likely to have at least one gator. Some lakes have huge colonies of them.

A gator won't hesitate to attack if threatened or hungry. Every year we have news stories of people walking their dogs beside lakes and the dogs are nabbed by a gator. That's why you should never, ever walk a dog by a body of fresh water in Florida or allow your children to play near one. A few years back, a child was killed by a gator in a lake at a Disney World resort, even though they monitor the lakes and remove gators. Sadly, they missed the one that got that child. It was a horrific story.

The parks we visited have warning signs about the gators, recommending that you maintain 20 feet between yourself and a gator on land. I would recommend a lot more than 20 feet! During cool weather, the gators leave the water to sunbathe on land and warm up (cold-blooded reptiles, of course). I have a co-worker who often jogs in one of those parks and she's sent me photos of gators only a few feet from the running trails that have no barrier between the water and the trail.

In a separate Snapshots post, I have a photo of an adult gator. He was a few feet from the shore where I was standing. But, gators are highly unlikely to attack an adult person, especially one on land. When we hear of a person being attacked by a gator, the human is always in the gator's territory - the water.

People who were raised here (I was not) have a more casual attitude towards gators and will swim or water-ski in some of the lakes and rivers. I would never do that. I've been boating on rivers where people are water-skiing and I could see gators on the shore or swimming near the shore.

Once my previous brother-in-law took some of the family for an overnight cruise on the St. John's River. In the morning, we anchored near a springs and my two nieces dove off the houseboat and swam to the springs. On the way back to the boat, a gator tracked them. He was about 15 feet behind them. We were afraid to warn them of the gator, thinking they might panic and not be able to swim. So, we pretended it was a race and cheered them on to swim faster. As they reached the boat, the men pulled them up quickly and the gator turned around.