Whenever I took the dogs out walking recently, we spotted an alligator down by the edge of the lake just behind our back fence, so I called the state alligator hotline, and they called Dale.
He caught two alligators in less than ten minutes.
Carla told me that she saw his truck out front, parked on
the swale, so I went out the back way, down to the lake. I wanted to show Dale
where the gator hangs out. He needed my input.
But Dale was already out there, straddling an alligator,
taping its mouth shut with black electrical tape.
He looked up at me, asking: “Did you know there were two?
See that guy out there? He’s bigger. ”
Sure enough, I saw the other one in the water about 40 feet
away. With the first one secure in the grass, Dale went into action. Using a
fishing pole with heavy line, and a lead-weighted, three-hook barb on the
business end, he cast out beyond the second alligator, reeling in the line…
fast.
Gator kept swimming but I thought it odd that he didn’t dive
or swim away but rather, headed straight toward us. “It’s the barking dogs he’s
after.” Dale said.
My two little yappers and my neighbor’s big guns, a
Rottweiler, and a large, spotted mix, were all yelling their heads off, at us,
and at the first gator, still struggling on the ground.
I remembered hearing that a big gator had taken an older dog
from its yard one night, just a little farther down the lake from where are. He
rolled around with that poor mangled dog, in the center of the lake for a few
days before Dale, or another trapper, got him.
Now, our barking dogs were like Sirens, calling #2 into the
danger zone.
Dale hustled to cast his line out two more times and was
quickly able to snag the second gator by the tail. Lots of practice there.
Thrashing and rolling, Dale pulled on him like a saltwater
fisherman with a shark. He asked me to hand him his catch pole, took it, and
with the gator up close to the bank, Dale asked me if I would be OK with
holding his fishing pole, now bent double and whipping the air. Trusting that
Dale knew what he was doing, I was game to grab the pole as Dale put a foot in
the water and rapidly noosed the second gator, pulling him up onto the bank.
With a roll of black electrical tape between his teeth Dale dropped down onto
the back of the animal and waited for just the right moment to clamp those
gaping, open jaws, shut.
A quick cowboy loop of the tape, and #2 was a good as toast.
Following along behind as Dale pulled parallel dinosaurs
back up the hill between our yards to where his truck was parked, I asked
questions.
How many removals so far? “Probably more than 1,000.”
You sell them? “Yes, mainly the meat. These two aren’t very
big, I’ll get around $60. each. I enjoy it. I don’t do it for the money.”
Back at the truck, Dale put the culprits in a holding cage
as I asked if he had ever been bitten. Holding out his scared left hand for
closer inspection, Dale said that he had let himself get distracted for just a
second one time, and that was all it took for a gator to grab his hand. Knowing
how important it was to prevent the dreaded alligator roll that so effectively
removes hands and feet, maybe a leg from a big dog, Dale clutched the gator in
a bear hug from behind. With a bite strength of 2,980PSI, almost three times
that of a lion, tiger, or hyena, Dale called his friend over to try to pry open
the jaws. Normally, that is just not possible unless you kill the animal first.
That requires a well-aimed shot to the back of the head in a very specific
place, something you can’t pull off when you are hugging the beast. But as fate
would have it, that gator was missing a front tooth. The gap was where they
were able to shove an aluminum pole halfway down the gator gullet, forcing him
to tap-out and open up.
By that time, the EMT guys were there and spent the first
twenty minutes washing and disinfecting the badly punctured hand and almost
severed little finger. The cleaning was repeated in the ER. Infection is the
real culprit with alligator bites.
“Flesh eating amoebas” Dale said.
Dale healed up and went right back into the danger zone that
he so loves. His big regret was that he had ducked out on his seven-year-old
grandson this time. “That boy loves to hunt gators with me. He’s fearless. He’s
going to be mad at his Grandpa!”
Nope, the apple doesn’t fall far, even if it lands by a lake
with hungry gators in it, eager to take your hand home for dinner.
Thanks Dale! I’ve seen videos of alligators climbing
chain-link fences like ours. The dogs and I will sleep better now…
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