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Game wardens forced to shoot alligator
Published April 16, 2005
WEST COLUMBIA — Anita and Charlie Rogers could hear the bellowing in the night.
Her neighbors in Bar X Ranch had been telling them they had seen a giant alligator in the bayou that runs behind their house, but they dismissed the stories as exaggerations.
“I didn’t believe it,” Charles Rogers said.
Friday they realized the stories were, if anything, understated. Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens had to shoot the beast, which measured 13-feet, 1-inch long.
“The first time I really got an idea of the size of it was when they got it,” Anita Rogers said.
Spring is mating season for the reclusive animals and the bulls tend to roam, said Joe Goff, who is not only the game warden who shot the animal, but has a house behind the Rogerses.
“In the last two weeks, we’ve had a number of nuisance alligator calls,” Goff said.
But Friday’s took the cake. Normally, game wardens will capture the animals and turn them over to alligator farms. Not this one.
“He’s too big,” Goff said. “We couldn’t capture him, he’s too dangerous. He’ll eat the females.”
Goff said the alligator swam to within 3 feet of him. Goff shot him with a .22-caliber rifle.
“He’s blind in his left eye,” Goff said. “It was spooky.”
Goff said the alligator will be given to a nuisance hunter who puts bids in with the state and will pay for the animal. The hunter then will clean the carcass and sell the meat and hide for processing.
While alligators can be a danger to pets, they’re generally not a threat to humans, said Charles Mann, a zookeeper in the reptile and amphibian department at the Houston Zoo.
“Certainly an alligator that gets up to 13 feet long gets that way by being very wary and probably tries to shy away from anything that could hurt it, mainly people,” Mann said.
Mann estimated the animal had to be at least 12 to 15 years old, but could be much older, based on its size.
“They grow about a foot a year until they’re 7 or 8 feet long, then past that they grow slower,” Mann said. “The record for longevity would be 50 or 60 years.”
Anita Rogers said she kept her dogs in the fence when she first heard the stories and heard the bellowing, which she likened to a giant bullfrog.
The Rogerses are glad the reptile is gone, but they don’t have problems with the smaller ones in the water.
“They keep the bayou cleaned out,” Charles Rogers said.
Mann said the animals, which have been around for hundreds of millions of years, were almost wiped out before the federal government stepped in.
“It’s really a success story of the Endangered Species Act,” he said.
Anyone having trouble with an alligator should call the Parks and Wildlife Department for assistance at (281) 842-8100.
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GATOR-AID
Anyone having trouble with an alligator should call the Parks and Wildlife Department for assistance at (281) 842-8100.
Michael Wright covers environmental issues for The Facts. Contact him at (979) 849-8581.
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