As Florida's populations of people and allgators boom, the reptile is inva.ng backyards and golf courses and prompting thousands to call for gator aiel.

B Y A N D R E W C. R E V K I N

Alligators lurk, sometimes inconspicuously, in just about every body of fresh water in Florida-from ponds to drainage ditches.

Near the end of a work­day, Theron McBride

dived beneath the surface of a man-made pond between the sixth and seventh holes of the Poinciana Country

~ Club in Lake Worth, Florida, ~ a sleepy town just inland ~ from the splendor of Palm w Beach. As a scuba diver for ~ "' International Golf-a com­z: §l pany that makes a business ;;; tt; out of retrieving, refurbish-i'D ing, and reselling 6 million ~ sunken golf balls a year-he ~ spends much of each week 1t submerged in water hazards.

On this sunny Tuesday af­ternoon the term water haz­ard would take on added sig­nificance. McBride had brought his girlfriend along so she could see what he did for a living. As he swam back and forth, scanning the mud for more balls to add to a mesh bag that already bulged with 400 or more, she saw an alligator pop out of a culvert and swim straight to­ward the spot where Mc­Bride was diving.

"She started screaming, and a couple of golfers started throwing balls at me to get my attention, but I didn't notice a thing," here-

calls. Then he felt a sharp tug on one of his flippers, and the next thing he knew, he was being dragged to the bot­tom, foot first.

McBride twisted around to see that an eight-foot-long al­ligator, a reptilian relic un­changed since the Oligocene Epoch 30 million years ago,

had clamped its long jaws

on his flipper. After a brief

struggle McBride was able to kick his

foot free, leaving the flip­per behind. Both human and alligator surfaced and swam briskly in opposite directions. "My girlfriend freaked," he says.

This was clearly a case for Lieutenant Dick Lawrence, a

wildlife officer for the Florida Game and

Fresh Water Fish Commission. Several

days after the incident Law­rence arrived at the country club, equipped with the odd and slightly gruesome tools of his trade: a fishing rod with a four-pointed hook on the line, a pole tipped with a wire noose, and a roll of electri­cian's tape. Within two hours he had snagged, wrestled, taped, and hog-tied the eight hundred twenty-fifth and eight hundred twenty-sixth alligators of his career­McBride's attacker and an­other, shorter animal.

These days, more than half of Lawrence's time is devoted to answering complainJs about alligators. As increas­ing numbers of northerners flee to the Sunshine State, de­velopment is rapidly spread­ing inland from the state's sparkling shores toward its flat, wet, sparsely populated interior. Ranks of expensive homes, often surrounding private golf courses and chains of man-made ponds, are being built on terrain that

is transmogrified swamp. With the help of a network

of 14 professional trappers, Lawrence, the alligator coor­dinator for a large swath of south Florida, responds to complaints ranging from alli­gators threatening pets to al­ligators in swimming pools. ("Usually, when they end up in pools, it's somebody pull­ing a prank," Lawrence says.) There are four other regions in the state with similar net­works of coordinators and trappers. Some of the com­plaints are urgent. But many of the panicked calls are un­warranted, Lawrence says, coming from transplanted northerners who've never seen anything more exotic than a cockroach.

Until recently the captured alligators would have been re­located deeper into the swamps. Unfortunately for the alligators, that is no longer possible. Florida's human population explosion has been paralleled by an alligator baby boom. After decades of conservation and successful battles to stem poaching, the alligator population has grown to at least one million.

The success of the species has meant that unlucky ga­tors that come into conflict with humans are now taken away and killed. "It's too bad, but it's the gators that get the worst of it," says Lawrence, a burly, tanned man with a fast pace to his southern accent that hints at his Minnesota origins. "The fact is, what we have here isn't a gator prob­lem, it's a people problem. But what am I supposed to do, refuse to catch one? There's always the chance that the al­ligator will do somebody harm, and I'd look pretty fool­ish." With 71 people attacked in Florida in the last ten years, he can""t take that chance.

A week after McBride's misadventure, Lawrence is in

DISCOVER • SEPT~MBER • 1988 73

Lee Kramer (above) scans a man-made pond for alligators. Dick Lawrence (right) hauls back, trying to snag a gator.

his cluttered office, preparing to head out after alligator number827. He starts the day over coffee and a pile of eight freshalligatorcomplaintsthat he grabs from his in-box. Holding a form at arm 's length, Lawrence squints to find the address. His farsight­edness is troublesome in the office, but it proves valuable in the field, where he must scan the wind-dappled sur­face of ponds for a tiny quar­tet of protrusions-paired eyes and nostrils.

The form, filled out by Game Commission employ­ees who take complaints over the telephone, lists a series of questions designed to deter­mine whether an alligator is truly a nuisance or if the com­plainant is simply someone with an overactive imagina­tion or unreasonable fears: "Is there human activity in the water? Is the alligator threatening pets, livestock; etc.? Is the alligator coming out on land?"

"Lots of people from up north are buying homes around here," Lawrence says. "If they buy a home next to a canal, they're bound to see gators. The next thing you know, I get a call: 'Oh my

74 DISCOVER • SEPTEMBER • 19BB

God, it's gonna get my kids!' You explain to them he's just there 'cause he's cold­blooded and he's lying in the sun trying to raise his body temperature. Damn, a gator's main diet is apple snails, rac­coons, sick fish, ducks, tur­tles. But they don't believe you."

Newcomers to Florida gen­erally aren't aware that the al­ligator probably poses less of a threat than other, less obtru­sive organisms, he says. "You don't see us getting calls about the bufo toads, with their toxin that can kill a dog in a heartbeat. Or the purple­tailed skunk, which can send a cat into convulsions. Or water moccasins. These are the real hazards down here. There are a lot of things more serious than an ol' alligator laying on the bank.'· For each "nuisance" alligator a permit is typed up and given to a trapper in the appropriate re­gion. The trapper then has 90 days to catch the suspect ani­mal. "If he hasn't caught it in that time, then it's pretty ob­vious it's not much of a nui­sance," says Lawrence. From July 1986 to June 1987, there were 6,784 complaints regis­tered in the state, with 3,634

alligators captured as a result. Lawrence deems several

of this day's complaints le­gitimate. Big alligators can do harm: they pose at the very least a threat to pets and live­stock, and at worst, to people. A dog running along a canal, a toddler falling into the water, or a careless swimmer are all potential prey for these animals, whose jaws snap shut reflexively when they encounter just about any­thing.

0 n June 4, 1988, for in­stance, a four-year-old

girl who was walking a puppy along the shore of a lake in Port Charlotte was snatched by a ten-and-a­half-foot alligator. Another fatality had occurred the pre­vious summer at Wakulla Springs State Park, when a skin diver ventured outside a roped-off swimming area. A little while later, as tourists in a "jungle boat" marveled at the scenery just down the Wakulla River from the park, they were startled to see an 11-foot, 415-pound alligator swimming along with the body of the diver in its jaws. "An eleven-footer is a big ga­tor to have around," Law-

renee says. "There is no way that a gator that big is not go­ing to do something bad to somebody sometime."

Lawrence heads out into the bright day, replacing his reading glasses with sleek black sunglasses. He stops at the home of one of the trap­pers, Lee Kramer, a lanky blond man with sun-cured skin, sleepy-but-sharp hound-dog eyes, and a hunt­ing knife and electronic beeper attached to his py­thon-skin belt.

Kramerseemstolikelarge animals with mean tempers and lots of teeth. Before turn­ing to alligator trapping, which provides most of his income now, the former Navy and commercial pilot ran a 44-foot sportfishing boat, often taking fishermen out in quest of sharks. He generates enough income from the state-authorized sale of the alligator hides and meat (somewhat of a deli­cacy in Florida, along the ~ lines of venison) to make a ~ living. Besides, he says, "It's ~ fun. It stops the general flow ; of bar conversation-es- iii

pecially since Crocodile ~ Dundee hit the screen." §

Kramer trails behind Law- ~

renee's patrol car in a rugged blue pickup festooned with stickers announcing that he iS an AUTHORIZED ALLIGATOR

AGENT/TRAPPER and a license plate that reads EL GATOR.

Driving south on Route 95, Lawrence reflects on his 18 years on the force. "I used to be against killing the gators," he says. "Nine years ago we used to release them. But then we started tagging some, and we found that thirty days later they'd turn up just a block or two from where they were caught." Sometimes an alligator would travel as much as 50 miles through south Flor­ida's network of flood­control canals to get back to its home.

As both alligators and peo­ple grew more numerous and incidents occurred more frequently, Lawrence says, "we found that wildlife offi­cers were so busy gator trap­ping that they had no time for anything else. In those days I would have four or five gators in the backseat, crawling up the windows. "

He passes a billboard ad-

''There's no way a gator that big is not going to do something bad

to somebody sometime.'' vertising the Indian Spring Golf and Tennis Country Club, which sprawls over a broad expanse just off the road. "That there five years ago used to be some of the best dove and qua1l habitat in the county. Now look at it," he says, snorting. "And they're still building."

The two vehicles are waved through the security gates of a posh development called Delray Dunes Golf and Country Club, and they park in front of a gracious ranch house with a backyard-like that of every house around­that runs down to the edge of a serpentine pond.

The duo greet a home­owner, who stands by his screened-in swimming pool and points to an end of the pond where a nine-footer has been seen . Kramer scours the mud along the shore. He spots long, scratchy claw marks that could only be those of an alli­gator. In the silty shallows he points out a faint line-a

tail drag, he calls it. As Kramer scans the pond

with binoculars, Lawrence stands on the steep bank, cups his hands around his mouth, and from somewhere down between his throat and his diaphragm generates a resonant nyuk, nyuk, nyuk sound. "That's the sound a baby gator makes," he says. "It'll usually get their atten­tion." For those days when Lawrence doesn ' t come along, Kramer keeps in his pickup a portable stereo tape player with a cassette filled with 20 minutes of Law­rence's nyuks.

The only signs of action are occasional flurried splashes as largemouth bass chase minnows in the shal­lows. "Should get my bass rod out ofthe truck," Kramer says. "We could do double duty." Then a vague black shape breaks the surface. A bystander loudly sounds the alarm.

"Turtle," says Lawrence without a second glance. Af-

Hooked by Lawrence, an eight-footer bursts from the water. Kramer snags it, and the gator spins, winding up the line.

ter a half hour of alligator grunts and searching, Kra­'11er spots something. "I see bubbles off to your left," he tells Lawrence. Fishing pole in hand, Lawrence jogs off along the bank, his holstered revolver flopping against his hip. He skirts the pond until he reaches the far side and­before he comes to a stop­starts casting his weighted, barbed hook across the glassy surface and reeling it in. Nothing doing.

He sends the hook past a swirl in the water, and it briefly snags something. Lawrence heaves mightily, rocking back on his heels and whipping the rod into a question-mark curve. A black form thrashes the sur­face into foam, then the line slackens and the water calms. "Damn!" he hisses. "Lost him." The alligator has vanished. After a few mo­ments Lawrence catches his breath. "Oh, well, if you caught 'every one of them, it'd just be a job."

On to the next step­a brand new development called Mahogany Bay. A neat row of months-old ranch houses abuts a man-made pond. Nearby, chattering sprinklers steadily water the synthetic hills and vales of a freshly sculpted and seeded golf course. A loud yelp breaks the stillness: " A snake!" A woman rushes out the back door of one of the identical houses, flailing

a yellow plastic broom. Pro­pelled by the broom, a dark squiggly object flies through the air across the neatly mowed lawn, landing at the pond's edge.

"Such is life in south Flor­ida," says Kramer, watching from the other side of the pond. Lawrence returns from scouting an end of the pond where he'd spotted a long-dead animal that might have been a raccoon or cat, decomposing on the shore­a sure lure for a gator. "Noth­ing there. I may as well check this out," Lawrence says, nodding toward the dis­tressed woman. He races off in his car, bouncing across the intervening moguls of the golf course. By the time he gets to the house, the snake has slithered into the tea-dark water. When the woman describes it as green, he reqssures her. "Couldn't be a water moccasin. They're black, and their mouths are white and puffy- cotton­mouths."

Then he gets on to the business of the day. "We're looking for an alligator that's been hanging around this pond. Seen any? " The woman hasn't, but a neigh­bor says a large alligator had been sunning on the bank at

76 DISCOVER • SEPTEMBER • 1988

the other end of the pond a couple of days ago. "If that carcass back there hasn't drawn him out, he's long gone," Lawrence says. He and Kramer scan the pond one more time, then cross a rise to check out a drainage canal. "There are five thou­sand miles of canals in my terri tory alone," Kramer says. "That's how the gators get around." The trappers' eyes light up for a second time that day as they spy sev­eral largemouth bass massa­cring minnows in the shal­lows. "Damn bass are canni­bals today," Lawrence says.

H unters Run is next, an en<;>rmous expanse of

verdant fairways and perfect greens, laced with a network of canals and ponds. "This place is just crawling with gators, " Lawrence says . "We're only a few miles from the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge" -take one alligator out of a pond, and there is sure to be a replace­ment within weeks.

A golfer passes, driving a humming electric golf cart emblazoned with SYLVIA .

"Seen any gators today?" Lawrence asks. The golfer claims to have seen a IS­footer . Politely feigning

credulousness, Lawrence says, "You see him again, you call me, y'hear?" Once the golfer is out of earshot Lawrence says, "Golly, I'd make love to a gator that big."

Alligator mississippiensis does occasionally get that large, but in 18 years, Law­rence says, the biggest he ever caught was a 12-foot 8-incher that used to bask on a runway at West Palm Beach International Airport. In an incident that made the local news, Lawrence was lowered upside down into a storm drain to get a noose on the 600-pound animal; the alligator had to be hauled out with a backhoe. Lest he get cocky about that achieve­ment, Kramer reminds him that his biggest alligator was 13 feet 6 inches.

At the next tee a golfer sets

Lawrence leaps on the gator (left) as it crawls up the bank. Once it's caught, its snout is taped and its limbs tied. Nuisance gators used to be transplanted but are now hauled away (below) and slaughtered.

his spikes, takes a practice swing, then proceeds to drive his ball straight into a stand of tall pine trees. "I knew he'd do that," Lawrence says. "See how he keeps his feet close together?" The convoy of two winds its way around the course, pausing politely as golfers make their shots, then continuing on to the next water hazard.

As he crests a knoll over­looking a large pond, Law­rence stomps on the brakes and leaps out, rod in hand. "He's right there!" Law­rence shouts to Kramer, who's already hotfooting it toward the water with his own rod. The water boils right at the shoreline. Law­rence nearly slides into the pond as he casts and hauls back with a sharp grunt. But the alligator's leathery back defies the hook's honed

...

barbs. Lawrence falls over backward as the hook zings back at him and a large alli­gator makes for the depths.

A few minutes later they spot an alligator surfacing to­ward the far shore: a black lumpy line in a blinding sea of wavetop reflections. Law­rence's blood is up now (he is an avid fisherman and deer hunter as well as wildlife offi­cer). After a long, slow morn­ing, everything happens in fast motion. Lawrence tosses the rod into the car and races off across the course. Several elderly golfers who have ar­rived at a nearby tee gawk. "Go get him! "one yells. Lawrence speeds around the pond, his car door swinging open because the rod didn't fit inside, following golf-cart paths that aren't really wide enough for his Chevrolet Ce­lebrity. He narrowly misses a line of palm trees. His head hits the roof as the car cata­pults over a bump. Once again he runs to the water's edge, casting and heaving, casting and heaving.

The water erupts about 50 yards from shore. "Now I've got you," Lawrence howls, and then he starts to talk to himself as the lunging reptile threatens to jerk the rod from his hands. "Hold him, hold on." Perhaps because of his penchant for sportfishing, Lawrence only uses 30-pound-test line to catch 100-pound-plus alligators . Slowly he works the alligator toward shore, using the re­lentless pull of the flexing rod to tire it out.

The alligator is just a few yards away, half-hidden by the brownish water, when Kramer rushes into the pond and heaves a heavier line, tied to a second hook, over the dark silhouette. The black-backed, yellow-bellied animal slaps and twists and rolls and claps its tooth-

78 DISCOVER • SEPTEMBER • 1988

studded jaws, trying to es­cape, but it's no use.

Lawrence drops his rod and leaps onto the beached alligator, straddling it like a horse and forcing its snout to the mud with his hands. He grasps its closed mouth with his fingers and arches its head up. "Tape! Tape!"

Kramer grabs a roll_of elec­trician's tape and quickly winds it around and around

tor's tail whipped around, and the officer jumped straight up, but he didn't jump high enough. The tail took his feet out from under him. On the way down, the tail came back and slapped him in the head. Knocked him out cold."

Several golf carts pull up to the spot on the fairway to where Lawrence and Kramer

·have carried the alligator.

Alligator number 827 measured eight feet seven inches.

the snout, which Lawrence is still holding shut with his hands. The alligator's four­foot tail lashes side to side.

The taping and trussing takes five more minutes, un­til the alligator has its fore­limbs tied and mouth se­cured. " We can ' t take chances," says Lawrence. "One time I taped up a gator, a ten-footer. Had a new offi­cer with me. The gator was hissing and this guy was walking around it. The ga-

The golfers gather around and stare quietly at the im­mobilized reptile, which emits a low, steady growl and moves its snout back and forth. "Where are you going to take it?" asks one golfer. " It's going to be killed," Lawrence answers. " Don't got a place to put them anymore." "Oh," says the golfer, looking surprised.

Lawrence and Kramer heave the heavy animal into the back of the pickup. After

Kramer takes it home, the al­ligator will be shot once in the head or struck with an axe. It is then drained of blood, washed in soap and water to clean the hide, chilled and skinned. The hide is scraped, salted, and cured. Periodically, the hides are sent to Gainesville, where they are graded and auctioned, with exotic­leather dealers from around the world placing bids. The state gets $30 per alligator, which helps pay for the alli­gator-control program; the rest of the money goes to the trapper.

At the last sale, hides went for $42.70 per foot, says Law­rence. At that rate, a 10-foot alligator means $397; the trapper can also sell the alli­gator tail meat, which can fetch from $5 to $8 per pound. The meat is sold in boxes marked with a seal that proves it was taken un­der permit. "They sell all they can get," Lawrence says. "You can't supply the restaurants with enough." Lawrence himself is not a lover of grilled gator tail. "I like it, but I wouldn't drive out of my way to get it."

Just before Kramer drives away, a deeply tanned greenkeeper looks into the bed of the truck. "I just had a gator burger last week," he says.

One week later Lawrence is back in his office, staring at a new pile of alligator com­plaints. He's already up to ;l:

gator number 832. As he ~ heads out the door, bound ~ for a retirement village to ~ capture number 833, he tells iii a secretary, " I'll be back ~ around three, if the gators § don't get me." 0 ~

Senior Editor Andrew C. Revkin braved the wilds of four Florida golf courses to get Lawrence's story.