" The eyes of the alligator surfaced above the still water like a telescope on a submarine, peeking at the rare arrival of a foreigner to this desolate plot of nature. It isn't often that anyone comes here, at least not that Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder has noticed.

Crowder figures a few reasons for that. First, it takes a small boat -- similar to his old, rickety Tournament TX-17 Bass Tracker -- to slide down a makeshift dirt ramp at the 51st mile marker, square in the middle of Alligator Alley.

Another explanation might suffice.

``I can't get any of the guys to come with me,'' Crowder says about his teammates as he casts a fake frog toward a patch of weeds. ``They're all too scared.''"