A 'Gator Catcher

1895

AN OLD NEGRO WHO MAKES GOOD MONEY OUT OF THE SAURIANS.

How Jeff Makes an Assault Upon an Alligator Nest and Captures the Whole Family — The Babies' Wicked Papa Has a Way of His Own at Emptying the Nest.

Out of many queer, quaint characters perhaps "'Gator Jeff" is the most picturesque and striking in all of Pasco county, Florida. He is an ex-slave, black as a December night and so bent as to form almost a perfect right angle when he stands still. For years and years Jeff has devoted all his energy and thought to hunting and trapping alligators.

All the year around he is either hunting 'gators or locating the nest where he will shortly gather a harvest of eggs, or, if he prefers, a crawling, twisting sackful of young 'gators. The latter he has made a specialty for northern tourists. All like to take home a real little 'gator to some boy relative or friend. The little saurians are fairly hardy, are not dangerous in any way, are very bright and make interesting pets. The market price is from $1.50 to $2.50, according to size and activity. When one considers that there are often from 50 to 100 baby 'gators hatched out in one nest, it will be at once seen that the profits from finding and catching such a family are not slight. Still each family is rapidly depleted from the moment of hatching, and if the youngsters are not found till a week after leaving the eggs they are generally reduced to a tenth or less of the original number.

Thus Jeff has to keep himself well informed of affairs in the 'gator family, or he loses money.

On any still, calm morning, before the sun is showing over the cypress banks, you will see old "'Gator Jeff," as his name goes in that region, poling his dugout gently along under the shadow of the overhanging trees. The bent old black will have on only a pair of canvas or calico trousers, tied in at the ankles and fastened at the waist by a belt. In the belt he carries a short, straight sheath knife, with a 6 or 7 inch blade, and tied to his waist is a folded sack. Corked up in a small bottle in his pocket is some red pepper, and these, with the two coils of slender rope in the bottom of his craft, are his tools and weapons.

Suddenly he will head toward a low mud bank by the opposite shore, where a big, half sunken gum tree has fallen between the mud bank and the shore. As he noiselessly draws near a long, flat brown object that a novice might have called a rock or a small mud bank moves and goes down, leaving a long eddy behind. Jeff knows that is the old bull 'gator. He knows also that he has gone below into the hidden nest, where he will scare out Mrs. 'Gator, and then, taking advantage of the alarm, devour the greater part of his family. Papa 'gators are the worst foes their children have, and so Jeff loses no time. He draws the nose of the dugout upon the mud, and then, without a splash or a sound, slips into the slimy water. He dives, and an onlooker would wait in vain for him to reappear and would, when five minutes had elapsed, think he had been killed by the old bull or been caught in water grass and drowned. But, no! These 'gators have a queer fashion of selecting hollow homes under clay banks, the only entrance to which is from under water. Here the mother will rear the little ones, taking them on each fair day to sun on some nearby sand bank and returning home every night. If she leaves them a moment, fish or other 'gators, particularly their own father, will kill and eat them all.

Frequently, when the fond paternal parent evinces too much appetite and attempts to eat one of his babies in the presence of Mrs. 'Gator, he is thrashed and driven from home. In this case Jeff has only the bull to fear. He has, as is his usual practice, captured the mother the night before and has got her tied to a stake near his home. He dives and emerges beyond the gum tree trunk and under the bank in a little washed out cave. Here, high and dry, he finds, when his eyes got used to the queer, dim light that filters in through the crook water, the family of baby 'gators. Though their mother has only been away one night, he finds a third of the family gone, and that increases his anger, when he hears a snort and finds the bull is crawling after him from the dusky corner of the cave. He dips back into the crook, and when his enemy approaches the edge of the shelf thrusts his keen knife into the leathern belly and gives it a quick turn. An agonized grunt follows, and in a whirl of bloody, muddy bubbles the 'gator plunges out into the creek mortally wounded. Later on Jeff will pick up his floating carcass and tow it homeward behind the dugout. Now, however, he only stays long enough to gather up the blinking, unresisting youngsters and tumble them in a surprised heap into his sack. In about five minutes or a trifle more his head, with its dripping gray wool, comes popping up beside the dugout, and he drops the sack aboard. Then he clambers in himself and is off for fresh game.

His visitors and his few neighbors regard his calling as a horrible and disgusting one, full of danger and exposure to fevers, but Jeff laughs at this. When you wonder at his foolhardiness in diving under some foul clay bank, when both parent 'gators were at home guarding the young, he will show two broad rows of toothless gums and "Ya! Ya!" in the excess of mirth. He will show you how he can fling red pepper and totally blind the reptiles in their cave, how he can stab them or noose their feet or jaws, and, lastly, be assures you what you never heard before — that alligators are absolutely harmless under water except for the sweep of their big tails. They can only bite or use their jaws on the surface or on land. Then, after he has showed you his pens and artificial mud banks, where he keeps alive sometimes 500 little 'gators till the demand grows brisk, and tells you what a host of dealers he supplies all over the state, you cannot but admire the sturdy old darky. — New York Tribune.