Trapping gators in the Everglades
When the mugginess of a northeastern summer begins to oppress your spirits, there’s only one thing to do: convince yourself the grass is greener — or safer, at least — on your side by heading to a place where people have it even worse.
For me, that was the edge of the Everglades in August, where not only does standing outside for more than a minute challenge the fortitude of your every pore, but an alarming number of the residents want to kill you.
Invasive cane toads ooze sticky white goo that’s lethal to pets and highly toxic to humans. Venomous rattlesnakes slither undetected through dense vegetation. There are even black bears — who knew bears lived in Florida? — that can be troublesome. And while I was in no danger of having a massive iguana fall on my head — that happens when the temperature drops and the cold-blooded creatures lose their grip on the trees — it did happen to be Florida Python Challenge® Week (“an exciting conservation effort” to rid the state of these non-native constrictors) when I chose to visit.
I was blissfully oblivious to all these Florida facts when I planned my trip. It was for the alligators that I came to Naples — more specifically for catching alligators with “Ray the Trapper,” who makes relocating the beasts his specialty as an independent trapper for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Outside my hotel I see a tall, sturdily built figure in tactical pants with lots of pockets, a “duty belt” of sorts and several occupied knife-sheaths. I wonder what the SWAT team is doing at my unassuming lodgings at 9:30 a.m. on a Thursday, until I notice “ALLIGATOR TRAPPER” emblazoned on the back of his shirt.
Ray is busy telling a couple of European tourists eager to see alligators where to go. He greets me with a hug, then, in his laid-back and friendly manner, gives some straightforward instructions. As I climb inside his truck, the backseat and middle console laden with boxes and tools of the trade (and more knives) he warns me: “Don’t put your fingers in anything. You might not like what comes out.”
Before I left for Florida, my mother, evidently having seen snippets of Swamp People, pleaded with me to be careful. “I’m serious,” she said. “What if you fall out of the boat or something?”
Mama would be relieved to learn that instead of gripping the sides of a rocky airboat and gliding through gator-infested waters, I begin learning Ray’s trade inside an upscale, gated community. Safe as can be — minus the alligators.
After making it past security — Ray is a regular and welcome visitor of many such compounds — we take our station beside a manmade pond with an elegant “Beware of Alligator/Please Do Not Feed the Wildlife/No Swimming in the Lake” sign sticking out of some mulch next to a manicured palm tree. Ray uses a monocular to scan the water, then says laconically, “There he is,” slowly pointing across the water to what looks like a lump of plant matter to me.
Ray informs me that 99 percent of Florida neighborhoods’ water features aren’t natural, and the lines that run underwater to work the decorative fountains for the delight of condo-dwellers further complicate the already formidable challenge of wrangling an armorplated, thousand-pound leftover from the dinosaur age, with eighty-four teeth and a bite force of 2,000 PSI.
To live-capture an alligator, you see, you cast a “huge-ass hook” into the water, snag the creature, then “pull like a bull.” Ray flings his huge-ass hook with the mastery of a Byzantine soldier launching a trebuchet; it sails through the air for several seconds, then kerplops precisely where he intends it to. (Later, during a lull in the action, Ray let me have a go at throwing “the kitchen sink.” It landed about six feet in front of me, sank and collected what appeared to be moldy seaweed from the Dagobah system.)
There’s more to it than being a good shot. There are the overhanging trees and the tangly, jungly stuff that is the Sunshine State’s inescapable mise-en-scène to consider. It wouldn’t do to have your three-pronged, barbed hook get caught in the Spanish moss. And you can’t drag your angry, thrashing gator in just anywhere; if the water’s edge is steep and rocky, you’ll fall in and get injured — or worse. Mr. Gator himself might also get caught in the tangly, jungly stuff, or in the wires that run those fancy fountains.
A seasoned pro like Ray (eleven years in the business) avoids all that. As we observe the gator, his eyes and snout barely poking out of the water. I pepper Ray with questions…
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 2022 World edition. Read the full piece here.
