My gramma has a cabin on a lake in central Florida. One time me and my brother were exploring the creek that feeds it; they were undergoing a drought, and so the bottom was exposed. I'm walking around, and I have to step over this really big branch. I look at it, and notice it has these neat ridges running along it. I follow it along, and low and behold, the "branch" ends in a baby alligator torso - it was actually the little critter's tail. So, of course, I freak out immediately and we run like hell.
The alligator never moved; we came to the conclusion that it was probably dead. We did not go back up to it to check.
One of our neighbors later got in trouble for feeding a particular gator. It was an adult, and it lost its fear of people, so this huge adult gator would just come up to docks and boats for food. Ultimately, the police had to arrange to have something done with it, putting it down I assume.