Gary The Gator Guy

Note: We had a long day yesterday and didn’t get home from Terry’s appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville until late. Much of the drive up there and back was in the rain, and I’m just too tired to write a blog. So here is a repost of a blog from March, 2016, about a campground neighbor most RVers would prefer not to have.

We’ve been in a lot of campgrounds that have different kinds of entertainment over the years, including everything from bingo, to jam sessions, to movie nights. But my buddy Gary Greene, the manager of the Orlando Thousand Trails preserve, goes the extra mile and provides alligator wrestling!

After a day out exploring, as we were heading back to our motorhome I saw Gary and a crowd of people standing by a fifth wheel trailer and stopped to see what was going on. This is what was going on.

The gator was just hanging out under somebody’s trailer like he didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe he was comfortable under there, but the folks who own the rig weren’t so hot on the idea of having a reptilian roommate. He had been there the day before and wandered off, but came back. That’s not good for the alligator, the people, or their dog.

So Gary put in a call to an alligator trapper who does contract work for the State Fish and Wildlife Service to remove nuisance gators.

There were actually three or four of them that showed up in the same truck, and the first order of business was for one of them to crawl under the trailer and agitate the alligator so it would crawl out the other side. I think this is the job they give to the new guy.

Here is the gator once he was out from under the trailer.

He let folks know that he wasn’t happy being disturbed.

Using a long pole with a loop on the end, the trapper snared the alligator around the head, and then the fight was on. The critter was probably only about five feet long from the snout to the tip of its tail, but it was a scrappy little devil.

It didn’t take long for the trapper to get it pinned down, and then they wrapped electrical tape around its mouth to keep its jaws closed.

And here it is, ready to go on its way to its new home in a lake away from people, where it will hopefully have a long and happy life.

All of us onlookers thought it was a pretty good show, but Gary just smiled and went back to work once the trappers had departed with the alligator. Just another day on the job for a campground manager.

Thought For the Day – Never get married in the morning, because you never know who you’ll meet that night.