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.

A Florida Picture

1895

Pen Sketch of Southern Scenes and Surroundings by Paul Bourget.

A town of quite small houses, with streets, and all along their wooden side walks trees of magic and overflowing verdure, a bursting into leaf which the dust has been unable to sully, writes Paul Bourget from Jacksonville, Fla., in the Boston Herald. Persian lilacs, like those whose perfume I breathed in the east, stand in the street itself, gigantic, in full bloom, and perfuming the already burning air. There are, moreover, overladen orange trees, Japanese medlars, also yellow with fruit, bananas, palm trees, all of which foreshadow still another world than that of Georgia. A penetrating aroma seems to pass through the sun which shines in the too intense blue like the sky which overhung the Dead sea last year, when, on leaving the grim convent of Mar Saba, I perceived that still water and the soft line of the mountains of Moab. But yonder history and legend were for me mixed with the sensation of nature. Here it is nature alone with which I come in contact, nature with its murderous fauna, its violent flora, its atmospheric phenomena, rather its cataclysms, charm and danger, at once perceptible in the very air one breathes, in every small detail which we meet at the corner of the street, in the sudden jumps of temperature — in fact, in the entire life of this small town, so peaceful on this Easter morning.

Negroes and still more negroes. It seems as if the town belongs to them entirely, so densely do they throng on the sidewalks, the men in Prince Albert coats, with flowers in their buttonholes, and wearing trousers of bright shades, the women clothed in outrageously light colored dresses, among which those of apple green, poppy red and light pink predominate. Their bodices are cut in figaro fashion, their hats are decorated with ribbons and enormous flowers, and their hair is plaited in plaits which are very thin and very tight, the object being to diminish or destroy the natural crinkling. They smile, showing their white teeth between their thick lips. The white teeth of the men are displayed in a similar smile, and they all salute and approach one another with that ceremonious familiarity, that species of natural affectation, which is peculiar to this strange race.

The Florida Razorback

1901

The Florida "razorback" is the hog indigenous to this climate and soil. He is usually large of limb and fleet of foot, being the only known porker that can outrun a darky. He has a tail of wondrous length, which, while he is in active motion, he twists into the tightest corkscrew, but with which while quietly feeding he raps his leathery sides much in the same manner that the docile cow uses her tail.

He is self supporting. He earns his own living and thrives equally well in the highwoods, in the flatwoods, in the hummocks and in the marshes. He subsists upon anything he can find above the earth or underneath its surface. He has a clear, farseeing eye and is very sensitive of hearing. Nature has equipped him with a snout almost as long as the beak of the wild pelican of Borneo, with which he can penetrate the earth many inches in quest of worms, snakes and insects.

He is the most intelligent of all the hogs and is likewise the most courageous. He has been known to engage in mortal combat with a coon for the possession of a watermelon and to rend asunder a barbed wire fence. — Forest and Stream.

Florida Man Has Team of Alligators Pulling His Boat

1901

LEE DRIVES A QUEER TEAM

Florida Man Who Employs Alligators to Tow His Boat

Jefferson Lee, who lives on the St. John's river, in Putnam county, Fla., has the most extraordinary team in the country. It is a team of alligators that Mr. Lee uses to tow his boat up and down the river when he goes to market.

Mr. Lee has to go six miles down the river to his post office, and it is a hard pull against the current, coming back. He noticed how swiftly alligators swam, and it occurred to him that it might be a good idea to turn the alligators that abound in the St. John's river to some account. He captured a pair of young 'gators and raised them in his yard. He taught them to swim and drag a weight behind them, and he also taught them to turn either to the right or left by pulling ropes fastened to their teeth on either side.

When the alligators were big enough he put a harness that he had constructed on them and harnessed them to his boat. They swam well and pulled the boat through the water at a good speed. By pulling the reins that passed through the mouths of the 'gators, Mr. Lee was able to turn his strange water team in the direction he pleased.

Mr. Lee made a point of never feeding his alligators until after they returned from a trip, when he would immediately reward each one with a fine meal.

The alligators seem to be willing to perform their task of pulling his boat, and when he turns them out of the pen in which they are stabled and starts them for the water, they shuffle down to the boat in the liveliest style, and after they are hitched they plunge into the water with grunts of delight.

Mr. Lee says his strange team has never run away nor kicked out the dashboard of his river craft, but that they have one fault, for which, however, he does not blame them. They sometimes sweep their powerful tails in a curve through the water, and once smashed one of his boats into little bits and threw Mr. Lee and a party that he was taking boat riding into the river. They would all have been drowned had not the alligators swam back to them and permitted the party to climb on their backs, after which the alligators swam swiftly to the shore and all the party were saved. Mr. Lee now hitches his team 20 feet in front of the boat, so that the sweep of their tails will not endanger the craft.

Mr. Lee's success has created great interest among all of his neighbors, and now many alligators are being trained for duty as sea horses. — Chicago Tribune.