Outbreak of Panic in Florida : Fatal Alligator Attack Stirs New Fears

William Santiago used to sit back and chuckle when an alligator ventured onto the lawn of his lakefront home, but now he says he will blast any alligator foolish enough to crawl within pistol range.

For Santiago and other waterfront residents in Florida, the alligator’s image has changed dramatically from an amusing visitor to a deadly menace--a change prompted by a fatal alligator attack on a 4-year-old girl in the Gulf Coast community of Englewood.

Erin Glover was walking a dog with two playmates in the ankle-deep water of a pond June 4 when a 10 1/2-foot-long bull alligator lunged from the water and snapped the child in its jaws, dragging her underwater to her death.

For Santiago, the turf war between man and beast heats up whenever he broils a couple of steaks on his charcoal grill in the Dade County neighborhood, wafting an aroma that one 6-foot “neighborhood” alligator finds irresistible.

“He crawls up the bank right into our back yard and sits there with his back arched--just staring,” said Santiago, a 67-year-old Cuban exile who moved in last year. “The last time I went and got my gun, but he saw me coming and ran away.”

“We’re seeing a lot of panic out there,” said Lt. Dick Lawrence of the Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission.

Swamped With Complaints

In the week after Erin’s death, game officials in the state’s five regional offices were swamped with 849 complaints from residents wanting alligators removed--about five times the normal load.

“I try to calm them down but they won’t take no for an answer,” said Lawrence, who supervises the nuisance-alligator program in 10 south Florida counties. “Some say if we don’t come out there and destroy the gator in their neighborhood, they’re going to do it themselves.”

Game officials recently received a report that a hysterical woman living near the fatal attack “bashed a 3-foot gator’s head in.”

“It made her feel a little bit better, but it didn’t accomplish anything,” said Lt. Jim Farrior of the game commission, adding that alligators that small eat only minnows and frogs, not people.

About 80% of the complaints result in a permit issued to destroy the alligator, said Lt. Mitchell Brown in Lakeland. Last year, 3,853 alligators were killed, he said.

“Our main concerns are with a gator that’s been fed,” said Lt. Jim Huffstodt, a game commission spokesman in West Palm Beach. “People think it’s real cute to treat the gator like a pet and give it a name and toss it scraps of food and marshmallows.

“Over time, the gator loses its fear of people and begins to associate people with food. That’s setting the stage for a tragedy,” he said. He added that any bold action toward humans, pets or livestock is enough to order a alligator destroyed.

State-Licensed Trappers

That job is turned over to state-licensed trappers, a select group of experts allowed to kill alligators and profit from the armored underbelly skin and the bland-tasting meat.

But the fact is, the odds of getting attacked by a alligator in Florida are about the same as getting struck by lightning, game officials say.

The latest death marks the sixth documented alligator killing along with 95 unprovoked attacks in Florida since 1948, according to game commission statistics.

“These are the consequences we face as a growing state where people choose to crowd their houses onto the alligator’s native habitat,” said Bernie Yokel of the Florida Audubon Society in Maitland. “We sometimes forget the gator was here first.”

Biologists estimate that there are anywhere from 1 million to 6 million alligators in Florida, nesting in swamps and marshes.