THE LEDGER (Lakeland, Florida) 11 June 05 Lakeland Man's Rescue of Alligator Freed From an Alabama Zoo by Hurricane Ivan Will Be Featured on TV Sunday Night (Del Milligan)
Lakeland: Chuckie wasn't sure what to think when Hurricane Ivan rolled in from the Gulf of Mexico.
One minute the 12-foot-long alligator was crunching down on a dead chicken in his pen at the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo, the next he was riding the storm surge into a nearby swamp.
For Chuckie, the featured attraction at the zoo in Gulf Shores since it opened in 1989, his five days of freedom weren't quite the blessing you might expect. It made him a target of residents -- nervous, cranky and armed in the aftermath of the storm.
"People were shooting gators all over the place," said Tim Williams of Lakeland, a reptile expert at Gatorland in Orlando who led the effort to rescue the gator.
Williams is "Dean of Gator Wrestlin" and director of media productions at the wildlife park.
He organized the three-man Alligator Retrieval Team from Gatorland that traveled to Gulf Shores to search for Chuckie.
The tale of Chuckie's accidental escape and subsequent recapture, recounted in national newspapers and on television, including a mention on David Letterman's "Late Night" in September, will be told Sunday night at 8 on the Weather Channel's "Storm Stories" program.
Chuckie's saga ended well, but it didn't start that way for the bull gator, which Williams estimates at 800 to 1,000 pounds and about 40 to 45 years old.
"Chuckie was actually washed out of his pen by the storm surge," said Williams.
When the folks at Gatorland learned from news reports that the Alabama zoo's gators were being hunted down and shot, they called the zoo and volunteered to help find Chuckie.
A native of Jacksonville, Williams drove to Gulf Shores with Gatorland employees Ronnie Mitchell and Flavio Morrissiey. They knew the odds were slim of locating Chuckie in the dark among all the other gators in the 5,000-acre preserve adjacent to the zoo.
But relying on a combined 62 years of experience handling alligators, the trio broke out their spotlights and located Chuckie along a canal about 250 yards away from the zoo on Sept. 21.
After arriving in Gulf Shores and eating dinner, the team set out for the swamp to look for Chuckie and found him only by coincidence and educated guesswork.
"Flavio was looking at a frog," said Williams. "He bent down to catch the frog and there was Chuckie just sitting there.
"We caught him in three hours," continued Williams. "Just finding him was sheer luck.
"We were hooting and hollering and high-fiving and having a good time. It was a great way to help out in a time of need.
"We kind of felt like the conquering gladiators who went out and saved the dragon," said Williams.
But securing ropes and electrical tape on Chuckie and wrestling a half-ton reptile through the quagmire of the swamp and across a 20-foot retention canal required the efforts of Williams' team as well as local police, sheriff's deputies, National Guardsmen and state troopers.
"It was a nightmare getting to him," said Williams. "It stunk, and there was dead fish and nasty water . . . it was horrible. But it didn't deter us."
It was a bold rescue by three men who thought little about personal safety.
"We were having so much fun that we didn't think about how dangerous it was," said Williams, who's been nipped a few times in his 30 years at Gatorland.
"Race car drivers have wrecks, carpenters smack their fingers, and gator wrestlers get bit," he said, shrugging off the risks.
While Ivan's wrath was well-documented for its harsh human toll, wildlife in the region was also hit hard, especially the zoo's reptiles, tigers and monkeys.
"The place was an absolute disaster. It was a mile from the Gulf, and there were areas where there were eels and fish 9 feet up in the trees. There were deer running loose . . .
"It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen," Williams said.
For the Weather Channel program, Williams said the Chuckie escapade was re-enacted about six months ago for a television crew at Gatorland, which bills itself as the alligator capital of the world. A different alligator filled in for Chuckie, however.
"We tried to be as accurate as we could with the pulling and catching," said Williams, who has lived in Lakeland since 1991.
Williams said the "Animal Planet" program on the Discovery Channel is considering a documentary on the zoo's recovery from Ivan, which made landfall at Gulf Shores, a barrier island due west of Pensacola.
Meanwhile, Chuckie is back at home in the Alabama Gulf Shores Zoo, although the zoo has not reopened.
"He's back in his pen and he's doing fine. He's back eating his chickens and doing wonderfully well. I hope to go back to see him and feed him a chicken," said Williams.
Lakeland Man's Rescue of Alligator Freed From an Alabama Zoo by Hurricane Ivan Will Be Featured on T