Alligators Are Really Shy

By Pringle Pipkin

Just ask Walt Rhodes. He catches them.

	Wildlife biologist Walt Rhodes opens a nest of unhatched eggs.

Imagine finding an alligator hiding under your family’s car. What would you do? If you lived in South Carolina, you might call Walt Rhodes, the state’s alligator expert. Mr. Rhodes has captured alligators in people’s garages, toolboxes, rosebushes, and even swimming pools.

“You have to think about exactly what you’re doing whenever you’re handling alligators,” Mr. Rhodes says.

His main job as a wildlife biologist is to study and protect alligators. For seven years, he has kept records of their births and survival. He wants to see how changes in the weather and the environment are affecting them. “That will help give us answers for management of the alligator to help it survive better in the future,” he says.

These large, usually muddy reptiles have been around for millions of years. But now they need Mr. Rhodes and other scientists to help them survive in a changing world. Alligators have been losing much of their habitat as people build houses, golf courses, and shopping centers near their watery homes.

Alligators live in freshwater swamps, rivers, and marshes along the coasts of warm states such as South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana. In the summer, the females build large grassy nests that can hold more than forty-five eggs. Mr. Rhodes uses helicopters and boats to find nests hidden in the marsh.

A Mother’s Protection

Sea turtles and many kinds of snakes lay eggs and leave them to hatch on their own. But a mother alligator often floats in the water near her nest. She will pop out to protect her eggs from raccoons, bears, or other hungry animals.

	An alligator hatches from its egg.

Surprisingly, mother alligators do not confront Mr. Rhodes very often, even when he is digging for their eggs. He sometimes faces a female lurking near the nest or hissing and flashing her teeth. These mothers are trying to scare him away, not attack him. “But you want to keep up your guard because you never know,” he says.

That’s why Mr. Rhodes always takes a partner along when hunting for nests. One time, he was digging eggs out of a nest in tall grass when the mother came up from behind. His helper shouted a warning. “I bopped her on the nose with the boat paddle, and she jumped in the water,” he says.

On a later visit, the same mother refused to back down. Mr. Rhodes kept swatting at her with the paddle while his partner emptied the nest.

Once he has the eggs, Mr. Rhodes hatches the baby-alligator families, which are called clutches, in special boxes in his backyard. Hatching baby alligators gives him a way to study them at this precarious time in their lives. Mr. Rhodes always returns each baby to its mother’s nest.

As young alligators grow and leave their mothers, they wander away from their homes, looking for food, a mate, or a new place to live. Usually they travel at night. If an alligator is far from the marsh when the sun comes up, it will look for someplace cool and dark to hide, such as under a car. In warmer months, when alligators are busy roaming, Mr. Rhodes is busy rounding them up.

“They are very shy animals, and that’s what most people don’t realize,” Mr. Rhodes says. “The animals view us as a threat. We tower over them.”

A Healthy Fear
Some alligators don’t slink away. Those that venture into places such as boat landings or golf courses can lose their fear of humans. Too often, people feed the alligators. Expecting food, some of these reptiles have approached people and attacked them. Alligators found in developed areas are often destroyed to protect people.

Once, a big alligator swam into a water pipe and ended up behind a drainage grate at a large store's parking lot. People saw the alligator and called Mr. Rhodes. The alligator was about nine feet down in the pipe.

“I laid down and crawled into the drain up to my belly,” Mr. Rhodes says. “Someone held my ankles, and I was kind of bent over in the hole.”

	An alligator’s camouflage keeps it well hidden in a marsh.

Using a long pole, Mr. Rhodes slipped a wire noose, or snare, over the alligator’s head and tightened the wire around the reptile’s neck. He eased the alligator up into the parking lot. Then he slipped a second snare over its snout and let the animal tire itself out by struggling.

While Mr. Rhodes’s helpers held the snares in place, he snuck up behind the alligator and squeezed its mouth shut with his hand. Then he snapped a thick rubber band over its snout, lifted the muzzled creature into the bed of his pickup truck, and hauled it away.

“Science is not all lab coats and microscopes,” Mr. Rhodes says. “Some of us do get to go out and play and get muddy.”