Alligators Do Not Make Good Pets

When I was about eight years old, a neighbor of ours, about sixteen years of age had a pet alligator. We lived in Providence, Kentucky a small coal mining town in the western side of the state. This neighbor was known for doing and owning exotic things. I remember being impressed by that small alligator chasing our hands as we moved them quickly along the edge of the old bathtub where he was kept. I do not think that he kept him very long as he was growing very fast and was getting harder to handle.

My next encounter with an alligator was in 1962, I had just gotten out of the service and was visiting my family in Sebring, Florida. Dad had retired from coal mining and took Mom back to Florida that she loved so much. The Florida alligator was not protected at that time and you could find plenty of stuffed ones in the souvenir shops around the state. Dad had taken up commercial fishing while I was in the service and he was enjoying the hunting and fishing on Lake Istokpoga. One of the things that he would hunt was alligator. You could bait hooks and hang them from limbs over the water for the alligators, but that was not the way we hunted. We would go out after dark in the boat with flashlights and 22 magnum rifles, drag the boat into the edge of the swampy shore line and then get out. We would wade through the swamp in water and mud up to our knees shining the light around looking for the reflection of the alligator's eyes.

The eyes would shine bright red, you had to be careful though, if the eyes where too high off the ground, then it could be a cow. When we spotted the alligator, then dad would shoot it between the eyes. My job when I was with him was to get the alligator by the tail and drag it back to the boat. Dad also carried a 22 long barrel pistol to finished off any trouble makers. Once when I was dragging a five-foot alligator back to the boat, he came to life. I could not hang onto that tail, Dad finely finished him off with the pistol and we had alligator tail the next day for dinner.

On one of those hunting trips I recall coming upon a small pool of muddy water that was full of swarming alligators, there must have been hundreds in it. From that time on I was sure that there would never be a shortage of alligators. A few years later the state of Florida placed a ban on hunting alligators and they started to greatly increase in numbers throughout the state.

As the fishing and hunting rules became more strict, Dad moved from the lake and into town. He bought twenty plus acres north of Sebring near Lake Bonnet. It was a peat bog that was being dug and sold by the bag. Digging out the peat left ponds on the property and the alligators loved that. Dad had one alligator he named Old Charlie. He was blind from a hunter's hook used at some time in the past. Dad would take fish scraps out to the pond and clap his hands for Old Charlie to come, then feed him the fish. They became great friends until after several years, Old Charlie wandered to close to a near by house and the county came out and killed him.

In the 1980's I took over the books and finely the peat farm and ran it from our home in Georgia with no more than one employee at anyone time, we just barely make ends meet. So we were always looking for some way to help it make a profit. One thing that came up was the possibly of creating an alligator farm. We already had a good start, with the ponds and a few wild alligators on the property. Kathy and I attended a three-day seminar at a college in north Florida on farm raising alligators. We learned more about alligators in three days than we ever wanted to know. I even visited a working alligator farm north of Avon Park and watched as they feed them and walked around the breeding grounds that consisted of a series of ditches dug in "S" shapes to provide plenty of nesting area.

Alligators are very hard to raise and there are a lot of risks involved. Alligator that you see served in restaurants are farm raised two no more than the second year. After that the growth rate slows and the feeding becomes too expensive. The best part of the alligator is the tail, cut into stakes with a center bone and four good sections of white meat. If you get dark meat in a restaurant, you are eating the parts around the shoulders and legs. The female alligator will adjust the height of the nest and coverings so that the temperature is correct. Alligator eggs can only survive within a very small temperature window, and the sex of the alligator is determined by just a few degrees one way or another. The egg will form a band that will grow around the egg, if the egg is turned over before this band has completed a circle around the egg then the embryo will die.

When the eggs are ready to be moved, they must be gathered and moved to a safe place for hatching. The hatching and growing buildings consist of a long building, low to the ground and the rood can be lifted to feed and clean the concrete pools inside. The building will consist of four or five compartments for different size alligators. That start at one end when they hatch and are moved to deeper pools and with slightly more room as they grow. The ideal is to keep them as quite and dark as possible so that they will grow fast and not expend their fat moving around. They are feed and hosed down each day for no more than two years and then sent to restaurants. Runts have to be weeded out when they are found not to be growing. You can feed a runt all you want but it will not grow.

Well with all this knowledge about alligators we were convinced that it was not worth the risk and gave up on the ideal.

About the Author: Hubert Crowell, Cave Explorer

I have started writing as a hobby and plan to write about my life, work, hobbies, religion and many other things of interest to me and maybe others will enjoy also.

For more information on caving, improving your service department and many other subjects, Please visit my web site at:

http://hubertcrowell.name/

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