Scott and Conny Randolph live on a wild piece of land they call paradise. They’re comforted by the hoots of owls and snorts of pig frogs. They look up at night to a sky full of glittering stars. And when they get up in the morning, they look out the window to greet their neighbor, a six-foot-long alligator named Big Momma.
Anyone who listens to the Randolphs, who live on the property of the Clyde Butcher Big Cypress Gallery, will get an earful on how beautiful, magical and serene the Big Cypress National Preserve is.
But those who listen to Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who proposed building Alligator Alcatraz, a migrant detention center smack dab in the middle of sprawling Everglades marsh, may get a different picture. “You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. No where to go, no where to hide,” he said in a video posted on X…