Florida Golf Course Gator Proves Elusive
For the past month or so, golfers playing the Gasparilla Inn Golf Course have occasionally faced a hazard other than the traps, the bunkers and the water.
An alligator, estimated at about 8 feet, has been seen at different locations on the Florida golf course - normally near one of the water hazards that dot the Inn's 18-hole layout.
Trappers have twice come to the course in the aftermath of gator sightings, but the reptile has been nowhere to be found.
On Wednesday of this week, trapper Beau Davis spent nearly an hour trying to track down the gator after yet another sighting.
As in the past two efforts, Davis came up empty handed. Or, make that empty-noosed.
"The alligator has been around for a long time," Davis said. "But when we get over here, he's gone."
Davis said the gator had been seen in the water of one of the larger ponds that constitute the nearly dozen water hazards on the Florida golf course.
Davis believes the alligator is a male who wandered onto the course looking for a mate.
"I don't think he's staying on the golf course," Davis said. "It looks like he's going back into the bayou. Maybe he'll stay there more now that mating season has come to an end."
Davis is an agent trapper for "Gator John French," who died Tuesday morning following a heart attack suffered the previous day while subduing a gator in Bonita Springs. French was also commonly known to islanders as "Trapper John."
Davis worked for French for the past year under contract with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
"He was one of the most straight-forward upstanding people I've met in my life, he was a great guy, and he was the best alligator trapper I've seen in my life," Davis said.
"He died doing what he loved. He always said alligator trapping was like an addiction. There's nothing quite like the adrenaline rush you get when you got hold of something that can kill you. He was always steady, just a steady person."
We are glad he did not die on that Florida golf course!
An alligator, estimated at about 8 feet, has been seen at different locations on the Florida golf course - normally near one of the water hazards that dot the Inn's 18-hole layout.
Trappers have twice come to the course in the aftermath of gator sightings, but the reptile has been nowhere to be found.
On Wednesday of this week, trapper Beau Davis spent nearly an hour trying to track down the gator after yet another sighting.
As in the past two efforts, Davis came up empty handed. Or, make that empty-noosed.
"The alligator has been around for a long time," Davis said. "But when we get over here, he's gone."
Davis said the gator had been seen in the water of one of the larger ponds that constitute the nearly dozen water hazards on the Florida golf course.
Davis believes the alligator is a male who wandered onto the course looking for a mate.
"I don't think he's staying on the golf course," Davis said. "It looks like he's going back into the bayou. Maybe he'll stay there more now that mating season has come to an end."
Davis is an agent trapper for "Gator John French," who died Tuesday morning following a heart attack suffered the previous day while subduing a gator in Bonita Springs. French was also commonly known to islanders as "Trapper John."
Davis worked for French for the past year under contract with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
"He was one of the most straight-forward upstanding people I've met in my life, he was a great guy, and he was the best alligator trapper I've seen in my life," Davis said.
"He died doing what he loved. He always said alligator trapping was like an addiction. There's nothing quite like the adrenaline rush you get when you got hold of something that can kill you. He was always steady, just a steady person."
We are glad he did not die on that Florida golf course!
posted by John at
7:54 AM
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