“You’re Not Afraid of a Little Old 8-foot Alligator, Are You, Phil?”

Think what you will, but this really happened…

One of our research techniques was sampling the biomass from ten traps (see Appendix for illustration) and from these 500 square feet of net extrapolating the entire biological mass of the Glades! These were flat rectangular nets with ropes in each corner, going up to a pulley on a pole in each corner. The two ropes on each end then came together in a V and stretched out some 50 feet to a pole in the water where we tied it off. All the poles had reflectors to help us find the traps in the dark, as we sampled a few times a month to catch the entire lunar cycle, day and night, year-round.

The Park rangers would take us out in an airboat to the sites. It took hours. We would approach in a broad arc around the ends so as not to disturb the critters, and on the count of three you would pull as hard as you could, lifting the net straight into the air. We would tie it off and collect our critters, dropping them into jars of formalin, and bring them back to the lab to identify and weigh.

The most memorable ranger I met was Erwin Winte. I have had such incredible good fortune in my life to meet so many people who were actually part of Florida history. Erwin first arrived as one of the Audobon rangers fighting the Egret plume hunters in the 20’s, a generation before it was a National Park. They actually shot it out with the poachers. Many were killed. Thus it was natural that he was chosen to become the first Ranger in the Everglades National Park in 1947. Sadly, in his later years I heard that this lifelong conservationist had been caught selling Liguus tree snail shells, a protected species. They had beautiful pastel bands of color, no two alike, and were highly prized by shell collectors without a conscience. The authorities figured he had to be getting senile in his old age and allowed him to resign and move away. Because of his historical role in the Park, he had not been made to resign at normal retirement age, and was already elderly when I met him in the sixties. And weather beaten! A real swamp rat.

One time Erwin takes us out at night to the traps. It was moonless and bitterly cold, and it was difficult to find the rope. I called to Erwin and asked him to flick his headlamp on and shine it over my way so I could find the reflector. He did so. Only problem: there were three reflectors! One red and two orange. An eight-foot alligator was floating in the water right beside the rope tie-off, not 20 feet from me.

“Uh, Erwin, do you suppose you could start the airboat and kind of swing it by here and scare him off?”

“You ain’t afraid of a little bitty alligator like that, now, are you, son?”

“As a matter of fact, Erwin, I am!” I could hear Fred off in the distance choking on his poorly suppressed laughter.

“Come on, Erwin.”

“Shucks, son, if I do that I might scare the little fishies in the trap and ruin the catch.”

“Come on, Erwin, enough kidding around.”

“Heck, he’s more scared of you than you are of him.”

“He sure doesn’t look scared to me, Erwin.”

“All you have to do is walk up behind him real slow, put your hands around his neck without touching him, and slowly slide them forward until they are around his snout and clamp down. They don’t have enough strength to open their jaws up when you’ve got a hold of ’em like that!”

“Pleeeze, Erwin?”

“How long do you think it would take you to walk out of here?”

 This was often how they would all win arguments with me whenever I was confronted with a new and challenging experience out there. I had grown up in South Florida. Family outings included visiting the Seminole Indian Reservation in Fort Lauderdale to watch the alligator wrestling. I had seen them hold an alligator’s mouth closed with just two fingers. This was not as unbelievable as it sounded. What I did not know that night, and for a couple of years after that, is that alligators have what is called an open circulatory system. Apparently blood will pool in these big open cavities in their body. The first thing our entertainer did was to flip them over on their back, whereupon the blood drained from their head, and they were effectively comatose! No big deal to get hold of their snout under those conditions. Erwin was risking my neck that night.

I did it. I snuck up real slow from around behind the gator, I put my hands around his neck, and as I slid them forward they passed over his two wide open eyes, whereupon the gator had enough. He gave one mighty swish with his tail and swam right through my hands. With a second swish of his tail he spun around not fifteen feet off and floated there looking right at me, bobbing up and down gently in his own wake.

“OK, Erwin, I’ve proved I’m not afraid. NOW will you run him off?”

“Nah, no need to now, he’s not in your way anymore!”

Sheesh! I finished the job with one eye looking back over my shoulder, and with both the gator’s eyes on me! What I had forgotten is that these cold-blooded reptiles would be extremely sluggish in the cold winter water, and, being critters from the center of the Park, they had not become acclimated to people through the stupid tourist trick of feeding wild animals. And it wasn’t mating or nesting season, when they ARE aggressive.