Florida Complaints : Alligators: Unwelcome Encounters

His name was Joe and her name was Cleopatra. He had watched her play from a distance.

For years, Joe the alligator had lived here in a coffee-brown creek, shaded by cypress trees. Mostly, he ate garfish, and he had grown fat as an old oak and longer than a pickup truck.

Cleopatra was a Rottweiler pup, just 6 months old, 76 pounds of friskiness and barking. She and her brother Caesar belonged to the Fogartys, wealthy people who had recently built a 12-room home near the peaceful creek, 20 miles north of Tampa.

On a steamy morning a few weeks ago, the two dogs had just gotten back from obedience school. They ran for the creek to cool off, and Cleo hit the water first. Joe was there waiting. He snatched her quickly, pulling her down deep and squeezing the breath from her startled body.

Alligator Returned

Lisa Fogarty, the dog’s owner, saw only bubbles rise to the surface, and then the bubbles moved farther away until they disappeared into the lily pads. The next day the alligator was back, floating near the shore. “He came back every day, waiting for the other puppy,” she said.

The story of Joe and Cleopatra is a familiar one in Florida, this year logging a record number of complaints about so-called “nuisance alligators.” They venture into swimming pools, golf courses, front porches and sometimes a living room. Many a family pet has suffered a fatal run-in with the state’s most famous creature, which has been here almost as long as the land itself.

Lisa Fogarty, eager to avenge Cleopatra and desperate to protect Caesar and her own two children, phoned the state game commission. The call was among more than 4,000 such complaints this year--a pace up 10% from 1984, according to Dennis David, head of alligator management.

Licensed Trapper Called

Wildlife officers turned the matter over to Mike Fagan, a 40-year-old country boy more comfortable in the marsh than the city. He is one of the state’s 53 licensed alligator trappers. They sent him a permit to kill Joe and a red plastic band, meant for tagging the hide.

“Neighbors said that gator had caught a calf, too,” said Fagan, a potbellied man with a nimble smile that overtakes his whole face.

He hung a shark hook near a cypress branch. He baited it with a large piece of beef lung, smelly as month-old garbage. He splashed some beef blood into the creek, sending the scent out with the ripples.

“A gator knows that meat is hanging there right away and pretty soon he’ll come to it,” he said. “But you’ve got to be patient. Once I had a gator sit under a hook for three days, watching the meat. See, a gator has only got a brain the size of a thumbnail but in some ways he’s pretty smart.

“He knows that meat has never been there before and he knows it ain’t supposed to be there now. Finally he takes it in his mouth and then he just plays with it for a long time. But sooner or later, he rears his head back and swallows.”

Mike Fagan killed his first alligator when he was a small boy, hunting with his dad in the cypress swamps. Alligator hunting was legal until 1961, when the much-stalked reptile was nearing extinction.

Since then, much of the virgin marsh has been gobbled up by bulldozers. Trailer parks and condominiums have spread across the drained land.

Still, the alligator, protected by both federal and state law, has recovered and thrived. Its population across Florida is estimated between 750,000 and 1.5 million. Where the swamp has disappeared, the alligator often has found a home in the tamed waters around somebody’s boat dock.

Modern Irony

“People spend lots of money to buy property on a lake,” said Fagan, who lives off a dirt road between two citrus groves. “Then they go out to the water, and as soon as some gator blows at them, they’re so scared they won’t go anywhere near the place.”

That Fagan can make his living hunting alligators is one of the ironies of the new, prosperous Florida. He detests the onslaught of concrete, spreading like lava from the city, subduing the bog.

But urbanization has provided him a job in the outdoors. He used to work for the telephone company, and he’d much rather chase alligators in people’s backyards than install phones in downtown Tampa office buildings.

“Some days that beeper is going off every time I turn around,” he said. “Some emergency. Some gator climbing a fence or something.”

The problem of Joe lingered for a week. Two other alligators bit the hook, both eight-footers. Fagan killed them and skinned them out.

They were most likely too small to have tangled with a dog the size of Cleopatra. Fagan still did not have the right alligator.

Neighbor’s Protests

He wanted to move the bait to a different backyard, but one of the Fogarty’s neighbors was firm in saying no. Old Joe would never kill a dog and he ought to be left alone, the man insisted. Fagan hears this plenty.

“By golly, you got these fellas who’ll raise hell with you and say that gator is their pet,” Fagan said. “They’ve been feeding it marshmallows and all.

“Then a week later they’re calling, saying, hey, come get this gator. He’s after my dog or my cat or up on the porch. Right now, they say! Come right now before I call the governor! Well, doggone it, I save them for last.”

Actually, Fagan is endlessly polite--a complaint department in a red pickup. He talks as if he were a parent and the alligator a child caught in a prank.

He tends to explain the alligator’s point-of-view, sometimes urging a reprieve. “An alligator will help you keep down your snake population,” he advised one suburbanite.

Joe Took Bait

In the case of Joe, Fagan’s original plan eventually worked. Joe did gulp that beef lung--and he was huge. Once hooked, he tore up the whole swimming hole. He thrashed and spun and got himself wound up underwater in cypress roots and two logs.

By the time the trapper got there, Joe was near-drowned. It took 2 1/2 hours to untangle him and haul him ashore. He measured 12 feet, 10 inches and weighed more than 600 pounds. When they opened him up, they found parts of Cleopatra.

“A gator that big can come out of a lake and run down a dog fast as a heartbeat,” Fagan said.

But alligators are almost always afraid of humans, according to Dr. Paul Cardeilhac, an alligator expert at the University of Florida.

He mentions three exceptions: If you get between a mother and her nest. If you swim upon a big bull gator twice your size. If you feed the reptile until its tiny brain associates people with supper time.

“They don’t know the difference between your hand and a hot dog, you get to feeding them,” Fagan agreed.

Since 1948, Florida has had 71 unprovoked alligator attacks against people, according to game commission records. Seven have been fatal, including the death of an 11-year-old boy swimming in the St. Lucie River last August. He was dragged under by a 12 1/2-footer.

But most complaints are prompted by an alligator’s mere presence--its leathery hulk a seeming threat to people who don’t know whether to run for their Polaroid or the police.

Until 1978, alligator complaints were handled by wildlife officers themselves. Often, they simply tried to calm people down.

But if the alligator had been fed by humans or if it wandered near houses or if it shared a swimming hole with people, then the officers tried to catch it and truck it into the swamp.

Finally, the complaints grew so numerous that wildlife officers were spending their whole day ferrying alligators. The commission began licensing trappers. Case by case, a permit was issued for each “nuisance” creature four feet or longer.

For Mike Fagan, the work started as part-time. There is no salary, but he is allowed to sell the solid white meat to restaurants. Its taste is similar to chicken, and he can usually get $5 a pound.

Hides are auctioned by the state, and the trapper gets 70% of the take. Tanners have paid from $8 to $25 a foot.

Skinned and butchered, Joe was worth about $1,000.

By last fall, the alligator business had gotten so good that Fagan was earning about $15,000 a year. He quit his job with the telephone company, and his youngest son, Charles, 18, also got a trapper’s license.

One reason the number of complaints is up is that more alligators are mixing with more people. In fact, later this year the state will allow hunters to “harvest” the reptiles in five lakes that are especially full.

Another reason is a spring drought that sent many alligators rambling in search of water and food. They have shown up repeatedly on the airport runway in Fort Myers. One wandered onto an entrance ramp of Miami’s busy Palmetto Expressway, tying up traffic during rush hour.

Found in Homes

“People leave their doors open and the gator gets in,” Fagan said. “I’ve found them under a kitchen table and one in the living room, between the coffee table and the couch.”

But mostly nuisance alligators need to be caught in the water. A trapper is not allowed to use a gun except in special circumstances. The shark hook and patience is the main technique. If that doesn’t work, the Fagans go hunting after dark in a flat-bottom metal boat.

In fact, the Fagans spend most summer nights on a lake or pond until midnight or later, when the moonlit water looks like thick black ink and only frogs and crickets break the silence.

One night Fagan stood at the prow of the boat, a band around his head with a light attached. He looked like a coal miner.

His head turned, and the light scanned the eerie distance. If the beam hits an alligator, the reptile’s eyes glow like burning charcoal.

“Well, there he is,” he said quietly, motioning to the right, ordering Charles to turn the boat.

Only Mike Fagan saw the alligator. It was a small one, a seven-footer. He knew this by the length between its eyes.

“If he’s smart, he’ll go under,” he said, tugging at his belt buckle and hiking up his blue jeans.

Playing Hide-and-Seek

A cautious alligator will sink to the bottom and swim away. A whole night can be lost in hide-and-seek.

But this one held still as the boat approached, curious about the light that kept creeping closer. Just its snout pierced the water.

“You got weeds here, boy, gonna tangle us up, you don’t come in right,” he said.

The boat moved right beside the alligator, and Fagan aimed a barbed dart into the soft flesh of his jaw. The sharp metal, attached to a rope, sank in deep. The alligator bolted for the bottom.

Once caught, an alligator will pull the boat through the water, trying to get free. A big one can spin a boat around like a kiddie-park tilt-a-whirl, but this one did not have the strength.

“He’ll tire himself out in a few minutes,” Fagan said, the hard part of the hunt over.

Actually, the Old Joes of Florida--the monster 12-footers--are a rarity. The average “nuisance” is about seven or eight feet, and the typical complaint is no more pressing than the one by Adah Reynolds, 73, of Holiday.

“I call her Allie,” she told the trapper, greeting him on the front lawn, just back from shopping. “And we’ve always got along fine till just the other day.”

Allie was only 5 1/2 feet long, more tail than anything else. She lived in a narrow canal behind the white stucco house.

While Adah Reynolds tended her garden, Allie would swim close, near the peach tree and the wild grapevine. The silver-haired woman enjoyed talking to the alligator, occasionally tossing her white bread.

“I was standing with my hoe the other day and she just swam right up near the step and grabbed that hoe,” the woman said huffily. “Allie, you get out of here, I said, and she reached for it again. Well, enough of that, I say.”

So Mike Fagan hung the hook, the beef lung dangling near a culvert where Allie enjoyed the shade. In a few minutes, she came out and gave it a taste. Then she swallowed and then she pulled and she struggled.

In a short time, Fagan waded into the shallow water and yanked the alligator to shore. He straddled it, taping its mouth and eyes. It looked puny when Charles Fagan picked it up one-handed and carried it by the neck toward the truck and its ultimate fate.

“Wait!” Adah Reynolds said, and she rushed up close, reaching in to stroke the alligator along its bumpy back.

Mike Fagan understood. “You’ll get another alligator in here,” he said softly.

“Well,” she said, hesitating. “She’s been a bit of friend, someone to talk to. I’ve watched her grow up.”

Then the lady petted her alligator one more time.

“Goodby, Allie,” she said, her eyes turning moist beneath the Florida sun.