Current mood:

happy

Aside from the not-so-fun crap at work yesterday, we did have a really fun experience at about 4am. What do you do with a 300 pound gator? This has to be one of the funniest calls I have been on in quite some time. I watched as eight deputies and the one animal control officer tried to wrangle this beast and get him off the highway. They had one of those pole / rope chokers around his neck but he wasn't cooperating at all.

There was just something so comical about all these people trying to tie up this gator, and failing at it. The deputies had tried using duct tape to tape the gator's legs to his body so he would quit moving and rolling over, but the gator kept ripping free of the tape. When I showed up (yay for riding in the supervisor truck again), I was able to give them some three inch wide cloth tape that we carry (which we mostly use to tape crazy or combative people down). That did the trick, and the gator couldn't rip that tape.

Once we had the gator's legs taped together, then they went to work on taping his mouth shut. Steve "Croc Hunter" Irwin makes it look way too easy on tv. That gator was hissing, growling, and still struggling. Once the mouth was taped shut, we had to lift it up into the animal control truck. The newspaper says the gator was only 250 pounds, but that can't be right. I swear the thing was heavier than that, I was guessing closer to 400 pounds.

Of course, the finale was to take pictures with the gator. We got a really funny shot of the gator all tied up with a deputy hat on his head. Hopefully I'll get a copy of that pic to post soon. I swear I was laughing for about 15 mins after it was all over. Somedays I do love my job.

*edit*

Augusta Chronicle picture. Note he still has the tape on his legs from where we taped him up.