Should be obvious, but apparently not to everyone.
In the time it took for something to hit the water and the unseen creature lying in wait to snap at it, the legend of the “killer gator” was born.
It didn’t take much longer for the story to spread around the world, from the small Texas city of Orange where it took place all the way to Europe, much to the annoyance of Gary Saurage, who has devoted his life to the prehistoric creatures that he says are marvels of biological efficiency and no threat to anybody with a lick of sense.
“It was an accident, pure and simple,” said Saurage, owner of Gator Country outside of Beaumont and a longtime trapper of so-called nuisance alligators for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “This is not an animal that attacks people. I don’t like it even being called an attack.”
Think of it this way, he says. Millions of gators live in warm coastal areas from Corpus Christi up into the Carolinas. Always have, forever and ever. More than half a million are estimated to live in Texas, but reports of attacks of any sort are rare. As for deaths, how many have ever been recorded?
“Until now – zero,” he said.
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In the three counties that make up the southeast corner of Texas, alligators outnumber humans. The saltwater surge of Hurricane Ike killed more than 100,000, but they have rebounded in the years since and have thrived in the midst of one of the rainiest years in recent history. Floods caused by those rains, as well as development and infrastructure improvements that add more ponds and widen waterways, serve to expand the alligators’ range.
People who live in the area say Woodward’s death and a second attack that involved a man and his teenage son in Lake Charlotte in Chambers County were fluke events that do not bespeak any increased danger.
Alligators in the wild typically avoid humans. One exception is a female alligator protecting her nest. Another is a gator that was getting food from people.
Saurage said he believes the alligator that went after Woodward, which later was killed illegally by a nearby resident, had for some time been fed from the deck behind the small, neighborhood Burkart’s Marina along an offshoot of Adams Bayou. An employee of the modest bar and hamburger restaurant said that was not the case, that people had only fed smaller juvenile alligators that had been around in previous months.
Saurage is skeptical. Why would a gator hang around if there was no obvious food supply?
“When I go to remove a gator, the first thing I look for is whether he moves away from me or comes toward me,” he said. “If he does not swim away, I know he is one who’s been fed.”
The same is true for bears, who like alligators interact more with people as human habitation moves into their turf. Alligators that associate people with food become nuisances. It’s not their fault, it’s ours. As long as the people don’t do anything stupid, they and the gators can coexist just fine. I’m a damn Yankee city boy, and even I know that much.