Dad's alligator story

Sarah needed to tell a story for school and I told her that Grandpa had a great story about an alligator. She called Grandpa and this is what he sent her.

Fifty years ago when I was 15, I went to spend the summer with my father, Paul Waterman Jr.

We had bay-front property on Tampa Bay in Florida. We had dug a canal that went to the bay. We put a temporary dam up to build the canal and put dirt on one side to build houses. On the other side of the dam was pure natural, creepy, swamp jungle.

My dad told me to be very careful because of water moccasin snakes when I went swimming in the canal, so I always went swimming with our three cocker spaniel dogs who were named: Charlie, John L. Sullivan, and Lindy. On hot days our dogs would go swimming in the canal without me.

One afternoon Charlie did not come home, which was very unusual. I thought maybe he had gone up to the nearest highway and something had happened, so I went to check. Nothing. The next day I went swimming with the two dogs, as usual looking for snakes, but everything went okay.

That afternoon John L. came home bleeding and limping and hurting very much. We had no choice but to put him to sleep. My Dad thought it might be an alligator. Alligators love to eat dogs. They have been known to climb eight-foot high chain link fences to get to a dog.

We drove the car back to the dam looking for tracks all along the way. At the dam we found alligator footprints and the tail prints both going and coming. My dad got a big metal stake and welded a chain on it and welded a big grouper hook on the end of the chain. He pounded the stake in right where the tracks were and put a beef heart on the hook.

The next morning when we went to check the hook, sure enough we had caught an alligator. He had swallowed the bait and hook and a lot of the chain and was still alive. My dad got a 22 rifle and shot and killed it. We hung it up and took pictures with us standing beside it. Later that day we cut it open to see if the dog collar was in the alligator and, yes it was.

It measured over 11 feet. We sent the story and the picture into the Tampa newspaper and they printed it. They also added that it was, at that time, the largest alligator caught and killed in the city limits of Tampa, Florida.