Fatal alligator attacks shake up people in Florida

MIAMI (AP) -- Trapper Todd Hardwick typically gets about four nuisance alligator calls each day, but he is getting 15 now, after an unprecedented burst of three deadly gator attacks on people in a week.
"People are shook up," Hardwick said just before capturing a 9-foot, 4-inch alligator Monday in a residential lake north of Miami. "It's like the citizens of Florida have declared war on alligators. People are really going crazy."
Before the most recent attacks, only 17 deaths had been recorded in Florida since 1948, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Although Florida has never had such a concentration of deaths in so short a time, wildlife officials said there is no pattern or common element to the attacks.
One victim was a jogger whose body was found in a canal in Broward County, on Florida's Atlantic Coast; one was snorkeling in a recreation area near Lake George, in the central part of the state; another was found in a canal about 20 miles north of St. Petersburg.
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