Game Warden Drags, Kills Alligator(on a Houston suburb's residential street-on video)

Channel 2 Pseudo-News website ^ | 4/29/03 | Channel 2 sleazeball tabloid newsroom

[dalereed]

"How would you convince a 9 foot gator to move?"

Put the neighbors poodle on a leash and coax it to the end of the street and if anyone said one peep, just kind of not lead the poodle fast enought and let the gator have his last meal!

[wardaddy]

Poor innocent gators dragged thru the streets and murdered.

The horror...gasp...that must have gone thru their all encompasing little gator brains those last moments being drug down the pavement on that "delicate" gator hide...sob...

...it would have been so much more human to have the Game Warden don loincloth and jump in the water with the poor sensitive little ol gator and give him the Johnny Weismeller treatment...lol

....this is the most absurd thread about mourning the "mistreatment" of a primordial swamp creature that only eats, kills, breeds, eats it's young (or your's given the chance) and dies....very much ado about nada.

Next time one of ya'll have to take penicillin for the clap, ya'll have a memorial for those poor victimized little ol tiny organisms eating up yer privates on me..ok?

[wardaddy]

Don't forget they like to stash yer carcass in a mudbank till it ripens to sate their esoteric palate...

Their taste buds are highly evolved...lol

[Grampa Dave]

About a decade ago, two police officers in Port Townsend, Wa. had to shoot and kill a cougar in a garage. They opened the garage door and there was the cougar. As the cougar got ready to attack, they shot and killed it.

There was an incredible outrage by the bambi lovers in Pt. Townsend. Of course the lies abounded that no one had ever been killed or seriously hurt by a cougar.

I sent up the articles about a women who was running on a river trail NE of Sacramento, and she was attacked and brutally killed and partially eaten by a cougar to the police office in Pt Townsend.

These Bambi lovers fantasize about predators who would kill them or any member of their family if the right opportunity came along.

This game ranger did what was best. Besides this gator was in an alley with no water to jump in and wrestle the gator.

[HoustonCurmudgeon]

Sorry to hear about your dog. Back when I was in high school my grandparents had a weekend place south of Geddings and a pair of bobcats took off after one of my Labs. Their mistake was failure to see the Rhodesian Ridgeback who was the Labs buddy. Bobcat fur EVERYWHERE!

[Dog Gone]

But it's so SAD!!!

---

"I thought the whole event was extremely cruel," suggested Cinco Ranch resident Laura Mercadante. "He was tortured."

Mercadante is one of dozens of people who watched in horror as an alligator was roped, tied to a truck, dragged down the street, then shot, all at the hands of a Texas Parks and Wildlife game warden.

"I feel that he needs some serious disciplinary action, definitely," Mercadante stated. "That's not my line of work, so I cannot say what would happen, but that was absolutely uncalled for."

The game warden, Mike Wise, a 20-year veteran, will not be disciplined for the incident. Wildlife officials say Texas law does not give cruelty protection to wild animals until they are captured.

"Once you put a snare or a noose on it, and you catch it, then it is subject to the cruelty statute," said SPCA Cruelty Investigator Jim Boller.

But Boller believes the alligator's capture changes how it should have been handled, and that cruelty laws then apply to the animal.

Boller told Eyewitness News, "That behavior, that handling of the animal is inappropriate. Whether or not the wardens have ever been taught proper handling or not, I don't know."

So the question now is, will this game warden face animal cruelty charges? At this point it seems unlikely. We're told that's a decision that will have to be made by the Fort Bend county district attorney's office, and so far there has been no action from that office on this case.

Officials at Texas Parks and Wildlife tell Eyewitness News that this alligator was injured. It was missing an eye, and because of that injury the alligator may have been more aggressive. Officials also say that this alligator was lying in the middle of a school bus stop and there were dozens of children around. Those are two reasons why the game warden took the action that he did. However, TPW is probably going to change the way it handles alligator nuisance calls in the future because of this controversy.

[HoustonCurmudgeon]

You forgot Nolan Ryan

Nolan lives in Alvin and is moving soon to Round Rock.

[wardaddy]

Winter before last, I had a small doe run over(by a soc-mom) near my home in a Nashville upper middle class hood. I stopped. There was a circle of soccer moms standing about all panicky and morose. I happen to have my Jaeger .54 sidehammer frontloader in the back loaded but uncapped. I asked if they wanted me to put this now 3 legged and bleeding profusely deer out of it's pain. They all said "yes of course please". I took my rifle and capped it and shot the deer with my 565 grain maxie/minie thru the base of the skull...all over instantly.

They all looked at me terrified and several cried. One blurted out "Sir, aren't you going to take the deer with you?"....lol....they wanted it dead but didn't want to deal with the pain of having to view the aftermath...the reality. I only wanted to get my arse out of their before the cops showed up seeing as I was inside Nashville proper and within 200 yards of a dwelling. Some nearby Mexicans took the carcass for meat.

I thought also at the time....how would they have reacted if I'd field dressed the doe on the spot and cut out the tenderloins and backstrap with my Gerb....lol....messy, messy.

Anybody thinks gators are cute really ought to see Faces of Death I.....a disgusting macabre voyeur flick with a truly horrible gator mauling in it.

Some folks must live very insular lives.

[Dog Gone]

Some folks must live very insular lives.

Most folks do. Death is wonderful entertainment as long as they know it's a Hollywood movie. But they don't want to be in the same city when Grandma dies.

[texson66]

No swamp for you!

[Clemenza]

That's what we do with ones half that size, that find their way into the suburbs through the drainage canals.

Gators were a common sight during the dry season (roughly September thorough April) when I lived in Miami for the same reason. When the 'glades dry up, they simply swim up the canals into residential areas.

[buffyt]

They used to feed some of them on Dow property, but someone made them stop. I don't know if it was legal authorities or Dow bosses, but they made the guys stop throwing chickens to them. If you keep alligators full, fat, and lazy, they tend to leave you alone. It is the hungry gator loose in your neighborhood that is dangerous!

[Grampa Dave]

People are real insulated.

Over the years, my older son and I have bagged quite a few deer. My wife loves to cook venison, and she finds a lot of great ways for her or me to cook venison. She loves to eat venison. Most of the time she has just seen the venison in packages from the butcher who cut it up after the deer aged.

Our son, the great white hunter, bagged a local deer in a friends back yard with his bow. The deer was eating up the corn, vegies, rose buds and everything else. So when bow season came, my son went over and bagged the deer.

He field dressed it at our friends and brought it home. We put into a deer bag and hung it up for the night to air out and cool down. He planned to take it to the butcher the next morning when the butcher opened up.

The next morning, my wife got up and saw the deer hanging in the bag with its head out. She could never eat the venison off of that deer.

King Salmon are different with her. She will stand, watch and instruct us on how to fillet or slice the steaks from the salmon. Then there is never a problem with her eating the salmon.

She can't explain why she felt different about the deer in the bag versus a king salmon being scaled and filleted.

[wardaddy]

My wife refuses to eat venison too. My 3 year old manchild won't eat it now after seeing me dress a doe last season.

My 13 year old middle daughter will eat it with daddy....course she hunts too on occasion.

I have a freezer full of deer meat....I literally can't give it away. The Feed the Homeless groups say they already have more food than they need here in Nashville. I mean I love venison...but day after day...you know what I mean.

[lawgirl]

I'm not a PETA freak, but this was incredibly outrageous. There was no reason to treat this animal in this cruel way. They should have relocated the gator, not killed him.

I hope the Ahole that did this is fired.

[Grampa Dave]

Venison is so satisfying and so energy packed, that we will only eat it once a week if we have a freezer full.

My older son's wife will not eat venison, but his soon to be four year daughter loves venison, duck, geese, pheasant and every fish that he catches. His two year old son, Bubba Bam Bam has not acquired the taste for game yet.

[Houmatt]

Anybody thinks gators are cute really ought to see Faces of Death I.....a disgusting macabre voyeur flick with a truly horrible gator mauling in it.

I think it is my duty to inform you almost all of the footage you see in that film is staged.

Some of it, like the skydiver who falls to his death, the aftermath of bicycle vs. 18-wheeler and plane crash, not to mention the autopsy footage, that is all real. The rest is not.