THE PINE LOG (Stephen f. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas,) 06 February 05 Student wrangles gators over summer near Beaumont - Study of reptiles provides experience for environmental science major (Lareign Ward)
Say the words “summer job” and most students will imagine dealing with angry customers at McDonald’s. Last summer, Robert Apple dealt with angry alligators as part of his internship at J. D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area in Port Arthur, just south of Beaumont.
Apple, Spring senior, said he dealt with alligators from his first day working there.
“I hadn’t even worked with a gator, they had me move an alligator in one of the (duffel) bags,” Apple said. “I didn’t really know if (it’s mouth) was taped up or not.”
He said he found out about the internship from a posting on the management area’s Web site, applied, and was picked to work from May through August.
One of the key parts of the internship was going out at night to find alligators, then getting them to throw up to collect their vomit as part of a study to see if alligators were eating a type of duck known as mottled duck whose numbers were declining.
In the day, Apple did various things like hunting education, putting tracking bands on ducks, and taking visitors on tours in the marshes.
Two or three times a week, Apple and others would go out to the wildlife area in an airboat around 9 p.m., since alligators feed at sunset.
“At night it’s easier to spotlight them (because) they stay still,” Apple said. “It’s like a deer in the headlights.”
He said they use a noose similar to that of a dog-catcher to get the alligator, which can be anywhere from 3 to 8 feet long. After putting duct tape around the alligator’s mouth and other areas to keep it from snapping, they take it back to the workshop and put it on a wooden table. He said the alligators are not very happy, but most don’t put up a fight.
“They’ll hiss at you but they don’t struggle with you too much,” Apple said. “Some are pretty ornery, they try to get you with their tail.”
He said the alligator is then strapped to the table, which requires more than one person.
“There’s usually two or three of us holding them down until we get them strapped down,” he said. “Once get away from the head it’s pretty safe.”
He said a PVC pipe is placed in the alligator’s mouth to keep it from shutting, then a water hose is run to the alligator’s stomach, with the water on the whole time until the stomach fills up.
“(Then) it’s natural for them to vomit,” Apple said.
The alligator is put over a tub to vomit into, while Apple and others would use fists to apply pressure on the stomach so more would come out. Then, using a filter, the vomit is placed into Ziploc bags until they are studied. He said this process takes about 45 minutes in all, and is repeated several times that night.
“I think the most we caught was six in a night,” he said.
While some may consider the process cruel, Apple said they keep the alligators overnight to make sure everything is OK, then take them out and release them the next morning.
“There’s nothing that we did that was really inhumane,” he said. “I hadn’t heard anybody protest or anything like that.”
He said the process must be submitted to an agency to ensure it’s humane.
Apple said he was nervous at first about dealing with the alligators, but then got used to it.
“Once you get the hang of it, how they act, you don’t have to worry about it,” he said.
He said he never found any human parts in an alligator’s stomach.
“We found fish hooks, chunks of wood, stuff like that,” he said. “No fingers or anything like that.”
Apple said he believes alligators have a bad reputation as vicious killers, something he does not believe is true.
“They’re pretty shy from what I’ve seen,” he said.
He said many problems occur when people feed the alligators in the park and they grow to associate humans with food.
“People feed them, they want to get closer to the food,” he said.
He also said alligators can be aggressive when breeding.
Apple is an environmental science major and will graduate in May, and said the wildlife area has a position open he will apply for, which would include doing more of what he did last summer. He said the job became routine with no real problems except the airboat breaking down once.
“None of the gators ever pulled us in the water or anything like that,” he said.
Student wrangles gators over summer near Beaumont