The Florida Alligator Dragnet

Within the first few paragraphs of his exceptional feature, Luke Winkie—Slate‘s newest licensed alligator trapping agent—is perched atop an apex predator, trying to help subdue it. Florida residents report 10,000 “nuisance” gators annually; each call starts a process that, over the past 30 years, has killed nearly 200,000 of the creatures. “What remains a mystery to me,” writes Winkie, considering the reptile he straddles, “is why this particular alligator—floating peacefully in a retention pond—was deemed to be a threat.” Winkie inspects Florida’s Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program from nose to tail; as he does, he reveals the Sunshine State’s complex relationship with its best-known animal.

An audience is gathering now. Families pour out onto mesh-screened patios, children press their noses against windows, mothers crane their necks from marble kitchen islands. With the rod and the rope as leverage, we heave the alligator onto the shore, where it becomes slack, worn down from the resistance of the line. “Sit on it,” Walters commands. I plop down on its shingled ridges, which are glossy with swamp muck. Walters places two slits of black duct tape over its eyes, wheeling the spool in a mummifying pattern around its snout, neutralizing the immense power in its jaws. Finally, he jackknifes a metal pole, studded with a scythelike spike, under the gator’s chin, where blood is spilled for the first time—a dark, watery trickle. With both hands on the pole, I drag the gator away from the retention pond in the same way you might pull a wagon, its limp claws dragging on the grass until we get to asphalt. Walters rummages under its tail. It’s a girl.