WWL TV (New Orleans, Louisiana) 28 June 07 Alligator survives after somebody cut off its tail
Photo: Terrebonne Parish nuisance-alligator catcher Easton DeHart took a photo of an alligator that he says he found last week near a Bayou Blue home without a tail. He suspects someone cut it off for the meat then let the gator go back into the wild after finding it.
Houma: For nearly 70 years, Easton DeHart has lassoed, taped, trapped, hunted, shot, skinned and eaten alligators -- too many at this point for him to count.
Terrebonne Parish nuisance-alligator catcher Easton DeHart took a photo of an alligator that he says he found last week near a Bayou Blue home without a tail. He suspects someone cut it off for the meat then let the gator go back into the wild after finding it.
But he maintains that never, ever, has he been cruel to one.
That’s why, when he discovered what should have been a six-foot reptile that measured only 27 inches near a Bayou Blue home last week, the official alligator man of Terrebonne Parish’s heart nearly broke.
"It just tore me up," said DeHart, who is certain someone deliberately lopped off the alligator’s tail, likely last year, based on how the wound was healed over. "It was cut off, its tail, all the way to his rectum, right behind his back legs. Evidently somebody knocked it out, hit it with a paddle or something and cut the tail off, probably just for the meat. I never in my life seen nothing like this before."
The tail of an alligator is usually equal to the length of the rest of its body, said DeHart, whose job entails responding to complaints about nuisance alligators around Terrebonne Parish. The tails are used to aid the creatures in swimming and are also a defensive, and sometimes offensive, weapon.
DeHart said he was amazed that the Bayou Blue gator had survived the ordeal at all and said it likely lived in a culvert over the winter and into the spring, eating frogs and other creatures that did not require swimming to catch.
Alligators are also dormant during much of the winter and don’t get around much anyway.
But when DeHart took the call for assistance, the animal had gotten out of its safe zone and was perceived by someone as a threat.
"I put the noose around him and let him roll a little bit and put the tape on him, just like with all of them," DeHart said. "He had got out of the ditch and got into these people’s yard. He put up a fight; he rolled like the rest of them. Now I have done a lot of alligators with bobtails, but 99 percent it’s another alligator did it. This was done by a two-legged animal. It was done intentionally."
DeHart has since released the alligator in a nonpopulated area, as he does with most that he catches on nuisance calls.
"He’ll be all right if another alligator don’t get him. Likely if anyone caught him on a fishing line that’s fishing alligators they would just release him." DeHart said.
The potential that being short a tail might make the gator less of a prize for hunters, DeHart surmised, should be of little comfort to the critter.
"I don’t think I would want to live without my tail if I was an alligator," DeHart said. "I would rather be taken out."
Alligator survives after somebody cut off its tail