I'm posting this in the baseball forum because it happened on my way home from the pitching clinic Matt Lacy held today, otherwise known as the Tech-FSU baseball game on 4-15.
Anyway, I am walking up Tech Drive beside Memorial Gym, getting ready to cross to the Carruthers parking lot where my car is parked. I see a critter running across the parking lot that, for some reason, strikes me as a big squirrel dragging a piece of trash. Once this delusion subsides, my childhood in the lakes around Orlando, Florida, flashes to mind and I realize that it is an alligator.
I pull out my cell phone and call Tech Police and tell the dispatcher, "Hey, I'm at Carruthers parking lot and I think I see an alligator." "An alligator?" he asks. "Yes, an alligator. Or maybe a piece of trash blown by the wind. Let me cross over and check."
So I cross Tech Drive, and once I'm within about 50 yards it is abundantly clear that this is an alligator, about 4 feet long. So I confirm this to the dispatcher, and I decide to "stand guard." So a couple of Tech Police cruisers show up, and get out and radio in that this is, in fact an alligator, and so they call animal control.
While we are waiting, they, of course, start calling all their cop friends. All told we ended up with 11 Tech Police and Ruston Police cruisers on the scene, standing in a circle around this alligator, taking pictures with camera phones. I asked every single one of them, and they said they had never responded to an alligator call before, except one lady who had worked in south Louisiana.
Now a 4' gator is an odd creature. I mean, he's not so big that you're all that scared of him, but he's big enough that you don't really want to just go grabbing at him. So we all kept our distance, scooting in to 4-5 feet now and then to get a picture with our cell phones.
Well, one of the Tech cops decides, based on what he's learned from "Crocodile Hunter," (he really did say that's where he learned this) that the best thing to do is to get something to throw over its head, to subdue it. So he goes digging around in his trunk and comes up with a shop rag, you know those 8" by 8" towlettes you use to wipe the oil off your dipstick when checking the oil in your car. Now this particular officer is, how shall I put it...large. I mean tall and broad. So he proceeds to start creeping up behind the alligator, shop rag extended and blowing in the wind, like some sort of oversized, underdressed matador. He finally decides that with the wind so strong, even if he manages to get the rag on the gator's head, it's not gonna stay there.
So, after about 20 minutes of photo ops and so forth, the alligator, which has been playing dead, shoots his little leg out, causing all of us to jump about 3 feet. He stays there a few more minutes, then jumps up and comes barrelling toward me. I scoot out of the way, and then he turns 90 degrees and goes after one of Ruston's finest.
About that time the animal control guy pulls in with his hi-tech equipment: a carboard box of the type that styrofoam cups come in at Sam's. He was also wearing shorts and slip-on sandals. He appraised the situation, commented that this was a "good-sized alligator" (not sure what he thought it was a good size for), and began to implement Plan A.
Plan A, as it turns out, was to make a frontal assault on the alligator and "scoop" him into the coffee-cup box, while we corralled him from behind. Surprisingly :icon_roll, the alligator didn't really want to get scooped into a coffe-cup box, and started chomping side to side at our legs as he made his best attempt at a backward scramble. At this point, the shop-rag officer decides to cut the alligator's retreat by stepping on his tail, apparently not realizing that this is his strongest muscle. So, with his tail pinned to the ground (for leverage), the alligator reels up, all legs clearing the ground, and tries to latch onto the officer's thigh. I have to say, despite his generous size, this officer has a pretty decent vertical jump.
Having learned his lesson, the officer finally pulls out his retractable night stick, and uses that to herd the alligator into the box. We asked the animal control guy what he was going to do with it. He said he'd try to find a place to release it--after he drove it home and showed it to his kids. :icon_wink
I wish that I had had a video camera there, or that at least there was a better storyteller with me to recount our adventure. Maybe one of the cruisers had their video running. I'm pretty sure we could have gotten a prize on America's Funniest Home Videos for the dance that officer did after he stepped on the gator's tail!