Gator Trouble
Imagine you’re a teenaged kid, maybe coming home one night from a friend’s house or a ball game or the like. You haven’t had your driver’s license for very long, and you’re still a little giddy over the newfound independence said license allows you.
Anyway – you pull into the driveway, park, and start walking up the sidewalk to the front door. The front porch light, for whatever reason, isn’t on. As you approach, you see an unfamiliar figure partially obscured by the wax begonias in that big Mexican pot you got your mom for Mother’s Day.
You’re a good kid; no drink, drugs, or anything like that, but all that is especially hard to reconcile with a clear mind when you hear a hiss and realize there’s a seven- foot alligator on your front porch. What do you do?
Well probably the best thing to do, as a kid from Ricardo, Tx did in just such a scenario some forty-oddyears ago, is to tell your parents. And in his case, his parents called the sheriff’s office, and the sheriff’s office called the game warden.
And as luck would have it, Texas Parks and Wildlife (TPW) was running a threefor- one special on game wardens that evening. Game Wardens Norman Anthony, Mike Fain and Jason McFall were out checking piers in the Riviera Beach area when they got the call, and in no time, they were headed that way.
You know, as a game warden, as it is in many professions, you try to do the best you can with what you have, and that was certainly the case for Norman, Mike and Jason that night. Back then, game wardens weren’t issued fancy catch poles, but every game warden carried a lariat, electrical tape and, of course, handcuffs.
By the time our protagonists got to the scene, the gator had moved around back to the swimming pool, which, for whatever reason, wasn’t full. There was just a puddle at the deep end.
Norman proceeded down the steps at the shallow end and readied himself to assist from inside the pool. With a lariat from Norman’s truck, Mike got a loop around the gator’s head and made a couple of twists around its jaws to hopefully diminish the chances of anybody getting chomped.
Then, while Jason and Mike pulled up on the lariat from poolside, Norman grabbed the end of the gator’s tail and flipped the animal up where it’d be easier to wrangle.
It was a great plan until Mike slipped and fell backwards near the edge of the pool, and Norman’s flip landed said gator on top of Mike, with its tail between Mike’s legs and the toothy end a hair’s breadth away from Mike’s head. Fueled by adrenaline, Mike summoned the strength to leap up and heave the beast back towards Norman.
After a bit of a regroup, the wardens slung the gator back up out of the pool. With all three wardens still on their feet when it hit the concrete, Jason leapt on the gator and taped its jaws shut with some electrical tape.
Then, in an inspired and ingenious “do the best you can with what you have” moment, Jason reached back on his gun belt, grabbed his handcuffs and cuffed that gator’s front legs behind it’s back. Mike followed suit with cuffs on the back legs, and that gator was – what we refer to in the business as – a had lad. The gator was then hauled off without incident to a more gator-friendly habitat.
In case you didn’t know, it’s gator season! If YOU would like to harvest an alligator before it ends up on some poor kid’s porch, check out the rules and regs governing such activities at https://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/ outdoor-annual/regs/ animals/alligator, and/or contact a game warden.
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