More Gator Stories
They say everybody gets their 15 minutes of fame at some point in their lives. For me it was when I got my picture on the front page of the Sept. 21, 2004, edition of the Corpus Christi Caller- Times.
I had just caught an alligator off an aircraft carrier. No – I’m not making this up. OK, so maybe I had a little help, and maybe it wasn’t technically off the “aircraft carrier proper”.
We foul-hooked it with a surf fishing rig from the catwalk and worked it over to a the nearby beach before pouncing on it and tying it up. In the pic, a much younger me and my partner, Game Warden Mike Wheelington, along with a couple of other dudes, are carrying a hog-tied 6 ½-foot gator out of harm’s way.
In 2004, I was probably at the height of my gator-catching prowess, having acquired a lot of onthe- job training when I was stationed in Victoria County from 1997-2000.
The first alligator I ever caught as a game warden was years earlier, and it wasn’t a big deal. It was only about four feet long and didn’t give me much trouble until I went to release it.
You’d think that “catching” would be the hard part until you get ready to release one by yourself and realize that the tape holding the gator’s mouth closed is the last thing that must be removed.
This can make for some interesting maneuvers on the part of the releaser once the tape is unraveled.
When I got my first call on a gator that was big enough to cause concern, I was lucky to be working with a gator-wrangler of the highest order, Game Warden David Heard.
When we arrived at the scene in the small town of Bloomington, Texas, the local volunteer fire department had barricades up at both ends of the street to keep folks out of our way.
David turned on his patrol vehicle’s red and blue lights for no other reason than it seemed like the right thing to do, and the firemen pulled back the barricades and waved us in. David got parked and got out and opened the toolbox on his truck. He pulled out a pair of gloves, a rope, some duct tape and a catchpole.
“Grab that catchpole,” he said.
I picked it up and tried to pretend like I knew what I was doing. As we walked toward the beast, David made a loop and chunked it on the gator’s head. He then cinched the rope tight around its neck. That made the gator mad. It went into a roll and thrashed wildly.
When it got itself sufficiently tangled up, David said, “Grab its tail with the catchpole.” He handed the end of the rope to a nearby fireman and said, “Hold on and keep it tight.”
As the fireman and I stretched the gator out like a team-roped steer, David grabbed the duct tape, jumped on top of the gator, and taped its mouth and legs.
With the gator subdued, David enlisted a couple more firemen to help get the gator in the back of his patrol vehicle.
When the gator was safely loaded, the crowd converged. Smiling mothers holding babies asked to have their picture taken next to the wrapped-up reptile.
A line formed. We hung out until everyone that wanted a photo got one. David clowned around with the kids to get them to not look terrified as the cameras clicked.
When the excitement was over, we packed everything up and took our captive to a more suitable habitat far away, and to my knowledge, The Beast of Bloomington never bothered anyone ever again.
Of course, there’s no way for me to be sure of that; I’m just looking for a happy ending.
Aren’t we all?
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