The back-to-back wallops of Hurricanes Helene and Milton left a cascade of debris floating and stranded across Florida, with cleanup expected to take weeks if not months. One single county, Pinellas, has 60,000 dump trucks’ worth of debris to deal with alone. But at least one resident is making the best of the situation: An alligator was seen sunbathing on a floating bed in Suwannee, in north central Florida, sparking local curiosity and a bit of levity in the wake of some difficult days. “I had just come back from getting lunch... when I saw this gator,” Tracy Kirkpatrick, who photographed the tanning beast in a tranquil state, told the Miami Herald, in a Facebook exchange Wednesday. “We had been wondering whose perfectly made bed had landed in the canal. Well, it was the gator’s water bed.” Another resident, Diane Strickland, said the mattress has been floating “up and down our canals” since Sept. 26, the day Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region. The Herald noted the fitted sheet and blanket remained neatly made, which the gator seemed respectful of. “It emphasizes the need to make sure your bed is properly made every day as you never know what will happen,” Strickland wrote.
