The last time Jean Mitchell visited us, she took us rovin' up to her little house in the North Georgia Mountains. This time out, she leads us ravin', oops, rovin' into her bathroom (a first for our family-friendly freenet) to tell us about an unlikely roommate. - Mike
A
Gator in My Bathtub
Brought to you by Peanut.or
Forget those headlines you've seen in those tabloid
newspapers that proclaim "Giant Alligator Drags Screaming Sewer
Workers to their Doom" or "Pet Dog Eaten by Gator While Drinking from
Toilet." I'm going to tell you a real 'gator story'.
As a Life Science teacher I was sometimes called on to rescue assorted
wildlife. So I wasn't too surprised when my brother showed up with a three foot
long alligator, stuffed into a styrofoam cooler, for me to resurrect.
Under normal circumstances I would have simply taken him (the alligator)
to the nearest river and released him, but this was obviously a very sick
animal. His third eyelid (nictitating membrane) was covering his eyes, and he
was as limp as a noodle—a very un-gatorish characteristic.
My brother had obtained this gator (I grew up calling them gators and so
I am using that very unscientific term) from a family for which he was building
a fireplace. For some reason they had decided a gator would make a good pet.
Whatever happened to the concept of warm, fuzzy pets? My brother had convinced
them that though the gator was very ill his sister could save it and would
return it to them in good health. Ha.
Apparently their concept of a good habitat was a styrofoam cooler half
filled with water. A very small cooler, at that. Actually, going back to the
concept of a gator in the sewer, this gator was living in as close an
approximation of a sewer as you could imagine. Judging by the smell of his
water, they had never changed it at all during the time they had him. In
addition to his own wastes, the water had rotting pieces of fatty hamburger they
had "fed" him floating in it. Together
the wastes and decomposing material made for a very toxic brew indeed.
The very first thing that had to be done was to get him out of the cooler
and into some clean water. During this time we were living in an old house that
had an interesting bathroom. The room was twenty feet long and seven feet wide.
It had a shower stall at one end and a huge old claw foot bathtub (which was
considered to be my territory) at the other end.
The gator went into my tub, and I switched to showers for the duration.
When I placed him in the tub, he promptly turned belly up. He was so sick he
couldn't even maintain his balance. Quickly, my husband built a bathtub size
raft that I could drape the gator’s head and chest over to keep him afloat.
With that crisis averted, we went on to the next stage, feeding him. He
was so starved that his tail was almost flat. Normally, gators have a thick,
muscular tail that is somewhat flattened vertically, so as they swim, they just
sweep it from side to side to push the water aside. This is a very energy
efficient way to swim. Looking at him there was no doubt that this gator's tail
was emaciated; it appeared to be only skin and bone. When I touched him, his
body felt like a skeleton rattling around inside his skin.
We happened to have some frozen smelts from the time we had rescued an
injured seagull (he did some time in the bathtub, too, until he was able to go
into the outdoor flight and was then later released at the coast), so food was
readily available. After thawing the smelts, I was faced with the problem of
getting the food into the gator. Since he couldn't even keep his eyes open, let
alone open his mouth to grab food, I knew he would require force feeding. So out
came the heavy leather gloves for me to wear while trying to pry his mouth open.
To say the least, it turned out those gloves were a bit of overkill on my part
because I was able to pull his jaws apart with no resistance at all from him. I
poked some smelts down his gullet and put him back in the tub. I was quite
pleased with my tactics so far and therefore felt frustrated when he threw up
everything that I had just forced down him. Up to that point I don't think I
would have thought of a reptile ever vomiting. Well, at least it was easy to
clean the tub; I just took the stopper out and that nasty problem went down the
drain.
Whether true or not, somewhere I had come across the concept that
reptiles fight infections by giving themselves an artificial "fever".
They do this by sitting out in the sun longer than a normal length of time.
Mammals can fight infections through fevers, cold-blooded animals such as
reptiles can't. Sunlight was at a premium in our bathroom, so instead of filling
the tub with cool water, I filled it with very warm water. As the temperature
would drop, I would drain the water out and put in warm water again. For two
days I tried to keep the water as warm as possible without cooking him. On the
second night, he opened his eyes but was still lethargic.
We got more smelts into him, and this time they stayed down.
By the third day, he was swimming back and forth the length of the tub.
Now, even with the help of my husband and a pair of leather gloves, there was no
such thing as prying those jaws open. I tried dangling a smelt on a skewer in
front of him and was gratified when he gulped it down. From that point on his
recovery was rapid. In just a
couple more days I realized that he was stalking the smelts when I held them
over the side of the tub. I had read about the way gators grab their prey and
then spin in the water to tear off chunks of flesh or to pull their prey under
water, and now I got to observe that process close up and personal.
His technique was simple. Using just his tail to propel himself, he would
sneak up on the hapless smelt dangling over the side of the tub, throw himself
upward, grab the smelt and start to spin like a whirling dervish. As he spun, he
would pull his eyes down into his skull to protect them.
Since my plan was to release this animal back into the wild, I wanted to
get him over assuming a human meant food for him. So when I was sure he would
eat the smelts without having them dangled in front of him, I started just
tossing them into the tub while I stood in the bathroom doorway. Because of the
height of the sides of the tub, he couldn't see me throwing the fish. Poor thing
probably had a shock when he was released back into the wild and found that fish
didn't really fall out of the sky.
Speaking of shocks, one day while putting on my make-up in the bathroom,
I noticed one of our cats, Zinc, sitting by the tub obviously intrigued by the
strange splashing he was hearing. Remember the saying "Curiosity killed the
cat"? Well, he finally
couldn't stand it anymore. Zinc jumped up on a stand that was at the end of the
tub and was finally able to see what was making that noise.
By this time I was watching the gator and cat just as intently as the cat
was watching the gator. At this point, the gator had seen Zinc hanging over the
edge staring at him. Very slowly the gator started swimming toward Zinc, who was
obviously fascinated by this interesting creature. Now, I knew nothing really
bad could happen and so let this little drama play itself out. When the gator
got close enough, he launched himself up the side of the tub towards Zinc. Zinc
must have thought the jaws of hell were coming for him, judging by his response.
He threw himself off the stand backwards and hit the floor running as hard as he
could. To his dismay he found himself running in place and going nowhere fast.
The floor was too slippery and he couldn't get a purchase on the vinyl so he
just ran in place for a few seconds. It didn't help the poor cat's self-esteem
either that I was doubled over laughing at him. He finally managed to escape the
horror in the tub and never went near it again even after the gator was
released.
After living and dining in my bathtub for two months, the gator had
become a normal looking animal again. It was time to release him, so my husband
and I loaded him up in a gunny sack. Using
our canoe, we ferried him up a
small creek into a swampy area. I kept him wrapped in the sack until we found a
really isolated spot. I wanted to release him very far from where people might
easily wander. When I opened the sack and let him slide into the water, he swam
away very quickly without a backward glance. About a dozen feet from the canoe
he dived and was gone from sight. The last thing I saw of him as he dived was a
nice plump tail, suspended for a moment above the water. So at last, seeing him
so obviously at home, back in his own environment, made all the effort
worthwhile.
And, besides now at last, I could reclaim my bathtub and go back to
taking long, hot baths again.
Mike
here, and thanks, Jean. I asked her
for some appropriate links for to accompany this article. Although she
couldn’t find anything on rehabilitating gators in your bathtub, she did come
up with these sites that have ideas for those of us who would like to get
involved with nature in a less invasive manner.
Florida
Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
Keep
your feet dry, even though some good folks get theirs wet to rescue an animal,
and your heart full of noble thoughts for those who care for, as Native
Americans say, “All our relations.”