Something had to be done about our little nuisance alligator. When I kayaked in the morning, he appeared near the shore. When I kayaked in the afternoon, he appeared in the center of the slough. Once, as I circled our slough, I had a not-so-subtle string of bubbles following behind me. So, I dug out the alligator-permit-pack which had arrived in the mail and scanned down the list of approved alligator hunters included in the packet. There were two pages of hunters and though fancy marketing business names such as “Critter Gitter” intrigued me, I was trying to be logical and just pick the closest list entry near my home. One person was listed in Alcolu, so I called and left a message on an answering machine. After two days and no call back, I called “Gamecock Exterminating” in Sumter. I explained the situation of the nuisance alligator and the lady who answered the phone said, “Well ma’am. I’m not sure we handle alligators.” “But you’re on the list,” I explained and she put me on hold. A few minutes later a man picked up the phone.
Him: “You need to know what to do about a gator?”
Me: “Yes sir. I have a permit to kill it, but I don’t know how to do that.”
Him: “You don’t know how to kill the alligator?”
Me: “Right”
Him: “Oh, well girl, that’s easy. You just get a boat, a spotlight, and you go out at night, point the light at the gator til you see his red eyes, and then you shoot it.”
Me: “I don’t have a gun.”
Him: (pause) “Can you barie one?” (translation: barrow)
Me: “I don’t know how to shoot a gun.”
Him: (longer pause filled with disappointment for my failure) “Oh. Well, let me have someone call you back.”
Later that afternoon, a man from Gamecock Exterminating called back and explained that he had only recently started hunting gators. He’d charge $150 to shoot it plus about $30 a trip for gas if he couldn’t get it on the first go. He tells me so far he has had three gator calls and on two of those he never even saw the gator and on the last call, he wasn’t able to get the gator he did see. This didn’t exactly reassure me. Especially at $30 a trip.
Luckily, even later that afternoon, the no-call-back man from Alcolu, my original contact, called back. We talked about “my gator” and he said he’d like to come down that evening and check it out. I asked how much he’d charge me to kill the gator.
Him: “Far as money goes, it ain’t goin to cost you no ten thousand bucks or nothing. You’re basically just paying for my gas. This is somethin me and my girlfriend just like to do together.”
Me: “Well, great.” (thinking: he and his girlfriend like to kill alligators together??)
Him: “I’m coming back from work now and I’ll just stop by my home and grab something to eat and I’ll bring my girlfriend out with me or if she can’t come I’ll grab one of my boys to come out there with me. I’ll be there tonight.”
A few hours later, right about dusk, the Alcolu gator hunter arrived and my expectations were not disappointed. He arrived in a pickup truck complete with Confederate Flag window decal and a sticker of a beautiful dear with the phrase “If it’s brown, it’s down.” He was a thick man, mid 30s, and he wore a camouflage shirt, khaki shorts with many pockets, and flipflops. His girlfriend was not with him and I was truly saddened not to meet her, the woman with the gator killing hobby. But he had brought along a boy - a skinny school kid in a wife beater, jeans, and cowboy boots. The truck bed carried a camouflage boat so small there was room only for one person to kneel inside. The boat looked homemade.
This gator hunter was not a novice. He had been catching gators as a volunteer for the last three years and he had plenty of stories.
Him: “An alligator he just loves a red cork. I got one gator round at Potato Creek that you can throw that red cork and he’ll bring it right back on shore to you and I thought, ‘Dang I got me a retriever.’ Course, it’s not good to do that and feed the alligators.”
As we walked down toward the lake to “get a lay of the land”, I had good feelings. Good feelings.