Could’ve been one of those quick and ridiculous ride-alongs, but this one is much more. Turns out not many people know what happens after they take the gators away.
Read Tom’s story: The seduction begins on the shoreline, in the decaying blue of late afternoon, when a man in a cream-colored cowboy hat readies his weapons and calls to his prey.
Eow-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo. Eow-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo.
He says the call can mean one of two things to an alligator: Defend Your Territory, For I Am Invading It; or The Time Has Come For Breeding, And I Need Your Crocodilian Love.
Either way, it works. A green-black shape slides toward him through the rippling murk of a water hazard on this New Port Richey golf course, and Mickey Fagan casts a juicy beef lung into the water. It is a Trojan horse.
The flesh hides a barbed steel hook, and the alligator that swallows it has already lost. A line runs from the hook to a pole in Fagan’s hands, and he can reel it in with relative ease. Armor and sharp teeth notwithstanding, it is hard for an alligator to fight back when steel shreds its insides with every move it makes.
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