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PINE BLUFF COMMERCIAL NEWS (Arkansas) 21 July 03 Reptile Drops In For Visit (Ray King)
Finding an 8-foot alligator in the front yard doesn't happen every day, but it happened Monday for a Jefferson County family.
"My son said, 'Daddy, there's an alligator in our yard,' and I told him that couldn't be," said James Hunt, who lives on Fletcher Road, near McFadden Road.
Hunt said he and his family, who had stayed away from the house Sunday night, found the 200 pound-alligator lying on its stomach in the shade, close to a vehicle in the yard.
"I sure didn't like the way that gator was looking at me," he said.
John Hunt, 13, said his first reaction was, "Wow. He had his mouth open and everything, and I ran to tell Daddy."
The yard where the alligator was spotted was not close to water, but "There is a lake across the road and a lot of sloughs that people don't know about," said Maj. Greg Bolin, operations commander for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. "It could have crawled out of there, or out of water near the Pine Bluff Arsenal."
Deputies contacted the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and officers from Monticello were dispatched to pick up the alligator.
"We get calls about snakes every now and then," Capt. Bernard Adams of the Sheriff's Department said, "but I don't ever remember an alligator call."
When a dispatcher from the Metropolitan Emergency Communications Association checked on the officers, Deputy Chad Dardenne responded by saying that "we're still waiting on the alligator wranglers."
After about an hour's wait, three Game and Fish commission officers, Mark Barbee, Rusty Mitchell and Mark Hooks arrived and threw a rope around the alligator's neck, causing the animal to thrash around, baring its teeth and snarling, while they attempted to get a wire noose around its jaws.
"This is getting to be a fairly normal type of call for us," Mitchell said, "although it's certainly not something we get everyday."
After securing the jaws with the wire noose, Game and Fish staff, assisted by deputies, wrapped ropes around the animal, then sat on it, using duct tape to seal the jaws shut, and secured both the front and back feet.
The creature was loaded into the back of a truck and will be taken to the Arkansas River and released, Mitchell said.
"I sure am glad that it's gone," James Hunt said, "but now my boys are really going to have a story to tell when they go back to school."
Reptile Drops In For Visit

The Tao of Wes and herp-news items.
With the forum’s indulgence, I’d just like to offer a short explanation of the ‘why and how’ of the press postings …
Well, the very short of it is that I have one of those unique jobs that serve two functions: it puts food on the table AND lets me support my hobby ... sort of.
One of my morning tasks in the headquarters is to skim through 60 english language on-line newspapers (as well as some French and German ones) to determine where the next international crisis and possible peacekeeping commitment is coming from. So, while we're skimming for Chechnya, Iraq, PNG, Bosnia and Sierra Leone; we also pick up everything we can on snake, reptile, frog, turtle, alligator, caiman, etc ... you catch the drift.
Then, once a week or each 10 days, it's collated and e-mailed out as a free 18 page, text-formatted newspaper; though publication deadlines are affected by a variety of army-induced factors such as being away from the computer while attending conferences, training and manoeuvres. (Which is why there are long silences from my end from time-to-time).
The items which appear to be most 'newsworthy' get posted to the forums immediately as I find them ... the idea being that if the appropriate, specialist community hears a rumor of a herp-event on the old-boy net, they can get the original newspaper item in good time and be able to react accordingly. Besides passing information, I hope it can be used as a warning tripwire for "geesh, here it comes again *bad news* herp items" that can affect the whole community. A specialist forum is probably the best place to discuss the good/bad elements of any press story, and to offer our concerned but less experienced herping-peers a good, reasoned and (hopefully) scientific response to any press initiative.
The press - good or bad - is already out there in the open-non-herp-keeping community. If we have the original item, we are all working off of the same problem and can discuss the 'facts' of the matter (as much as the press have given us anyway) and avoid trying to talk to each other about "a friend of mine heard from his boss that xxxx " ... you get the idea.
Please note, I have been mentioned in this and in other forums of only posting 'bad news' or ‘depressing news’. I stand guilty as accused, but please note that I can only post what is printed ... and I try not to editorialise or cull items. Naturally, with your forum (and the python/venom/crotalid/elapid's), the press only tends to print "Seven year old's pet caiman eats Volkswagen full of lawyers" stories ... unlike the Frog forum that tends to get a lot of good or scientific press. Some forums, like the Gilas, get almost no press at all! (Which is not necessarily a bad thing). If I seem to be on a run of bad news in any particular forum, it’s generally because of either the subject (when was the last time somebody wrote something nice about ‘Fuzzy’ the friendly, Oz saltie?) or maybe there’s been something that the press has jumped on lately.
I would like to thank those that did post some supportive and flattering comments, it’s heartening to know that my modest efforts are of some utility or interest to a forum in which I have little expertise (none actually).
Last: I do keep archives of herp-press back to 98 (some stuff for 97), so if there's something that you're trying to find that was probably in the press, please let me know and, military obligations allowing (ie. free time), I'd be only too glad to try to cull the back issues for items of interest to you.
Whew! Enough said?
Thank you for your kind patience.
Cheers
Wes

And I for one, would like to thank you (as I didn't before).

Also, I think this should have been a leading post on its own
I think everyone is glad to read the news whether depressing or not, as it really gives us an idea of how the public's image of crocodilians is being formed.

Maybe a little incentive to educate people more.

Mr F.