Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1895-03-15
A GATOR CATCHER.
en- OLD NEGRO WHO MAKES GOOD
MONEY OUT OF THE SAURIANS,

en- OLD NEGRO WHO MAKES GOOD
MONEY OUT OF THE SAURIANs.
How JEFF Makes an Assault Upona an Ali.
gator Nest and Captures the Whole Fam.
ily-The Babies Wicked Papa Has q Way
of His Own at Emptying the Nest.
Out of many queer, quaint characters
perhaps "''Gator jeff is the most pic
turesque and striking in all of Pasco coun.
ty, Fla. he is an ex-slave, black as a De-
cember night mi so bent as to form al
most a perfect right angle when he stands
still. For years and years jeff has devoted
all his energy and thought to hunting
and trapping alligators.
All the year around he is either hunt
ing gators or locating the nest where he
will shortly gather q harvest of eggs, or, if
he prefers, a crawling, twisting saokful
of young gators. The latter he has made
a speciality for northern tourists. All like
to take home a real live little gator to
some boy relative or friend. The little
eaurians are fairly hardy, are not danger
Gus in any way, are very bright and make
interesting pets. The market price is
from SIG to So. go, according to size and
activity. When one considers that there
are often from so to 100 baby gators
Matched out in one nest, it will be at once
seen that the profits from finding and
catching such a family are not slight.
Still each family is rapidly depleted from
the moment of Matching, and if the
youngsters are not found till a week after
leaving the eggs they are generally reduced
to a tenth or less of the original number.
Thus jeff has to keep himself we'll in
formed of affairs in the gator family, or
he loses money.
On any still, calm morning, before the
sun Is showing over the cypress banks,
you will see old "'Gator jeff" as his
name goes In that region, polling his dug.
out gently along under the shadow of the
o~verhanging trees. The bent old black
will have on only a pair of canvas or calico
trousers, tied In at the ankles and fastened
at the waist by a belt. In the belt he car.
rios a short, straight sheath knife, with a
6 or 2 inch blade, and tied to his waist Is
d folded sack. Corked up in a small bottle
in his pocket is some red pepper, and
these, with the two coils of slender rope in
the bottom of his craft, are his tools and
weapons.
Suddenly he will head toward a low
mud bank by the opposite shore, where a
big, half sunken gum tree has fallen be.
tween the mud bank and the shore. AS he
noiselessly draws near a long, fat brown
object that a novice might nave called a
rock or a small mud bank moves and goes
down, leaving a long eddy behind. jeff
knows that is the old bull gator. BE
knows also that he has gone below into
the hidden nest, where he will scare out
Mrs. Gator, and then, taking advantage
of the alarm, devour the greater part Of
his family. Papa gators are the worst
foes their children have, and so jeff loses
40 time. He draws the nose of the dugout
upon the mud, and then, without a splash
or a sound, slips into the Shiny water. He
dives, and an onlooker would wait in vain
COR him to reappoar and would, when five
minutes had elapsed, think he had been
killed by the old bull or been caught in
water grass and drowned. But, no! These
gators have a queer fashion of selecting
hollow homes under clay banks, the only
entrance to which is from under water.
Here the mother will rear the little ones,
taking them on each fair day to sun on
some nearby sand bank and returning
home every night. If she leaves them .
moment, fish or other gators, particularly
their W. father, will kill and eat the1a
all.
frequently, when the fond paternal par.
ent evinces too much appetite and at.
tempts to eat one of his babies in the pres
ence of Mrs. Gator, he is thrashed and
driven from home. In this case jeff has
only the bull to fear. He has, as is his
usual practice, captured the mother the
night before and has got her tied to a stake
near his home. He dives and energies be-
yond the gum tree trunk and under the
bank in a little washed out cave. Here
high and dry, he finds, when his eyes get
used to the queer, dim light that filters in
through the creek water, the family OF
baby gators. Though their mother has
only been away one night, he finds a third
Of the family gone: and that increases his
anger, when he hears a snort and finds tho
bull is crawling after him from the dusky
corner of the cave. He dips back into the
creek, and when his enemy approaches
the edge Of the shelf thrusts his keen knife
into the leathern belly and gives it a quick
turn. An agonized grunt follows, and in
o whirl of bloody, muddy bubbles tin
gator plunges out into the creek mortally
wounded. Later on jeff will pick up his
floating carcass and tow 1t homeward be-
hind the fdugout. Now, however, he only
stays long enough to gather up the blinb;-
ing, unresisting youngsters and tumble
them in a surprised heap into his sack.
In about five minutes or a trile more his
head, with it's dripping gray wool, comes
popping up beside the dugout, and be
drops the sack aboard. Then he bers
in himself and is off for fresh game.
His visitors and his few neighbors r.
gard his calling asa horrible and disgust.
ing one, full of danger and exposure t.
fevers, but JEFF laughs at this: When you
wonder at his foolhardiness in diving un.
der some foul clay bank, when both parent
gators were at home guarding the young,
he will show two broad rows of toothleas
gums and "Yal Val" In the excess of
mirth. he will show you how he can fling
red pepper and totally blind the reptiles in
their cave, how he can stab them or moose
their feet or jaws, and, lastly, he assures
you what you never heard before-that al.
ligators are absolutely harmless under
water except for the sweep of their big
tails. They can only bite o. use their
jaws on the surface or on land. Then
after he has showed you his pens and arti'
fetal mud banks, where he keeps alive
sometimes 500 little gators till the de-