Dateline: July 12, 2001

Alligator found near city's treatment plant 

Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

City workers hold open the mouth of the six-foot alligator they found in Clarendon on Tuesday, July 3. Enterprise Digital Photo / Cheryl Johnson

A common phrase was repeated last Tuesday as word spread of a quirky discovery near Clarendon’s wastewater treatment plant – “You’re kidding me.”

It was no joke, however. City employees had, in fact, found an alligator that morning – a run-over, smelly, maggot-infested, dead alligator, but a gator nonetheless.

“I thought my cold medicine had finally kicked in,” city employee Alton Gaines said recalling his discovery. “I asked Mike [Bishop], ‘Do you see what I see?’”

Gaines and Bishop were headed to the sewer plant for the daily check of the facility when they found the gator lying halfway in Jefferson Street and halfway in the weeds.

“It looked like someone had run over it,” Gaines said. “But it was really in pretty good condition.”

The beast measured six foot from snout to tail, and Gaines said they figured it had been dead for about 36 hours based on the fly larvae that had hatched in the carcass.

Other than tire tracks, Gaines said he could make out paw prints and raccoon tracks near the body, which he and Bishop later buried. City workers say the plant on the north edge of town is a popular place for animals – particularly wild boars and deer.

Alligators are not commonly found in Donley County, but it is not unprecedented. The Donley County Leader reported on February 2, 1950, that Bud Hermesmeyer had found a dead six-foot alligator in a coyote den near a playa lake northwest of the city.

The common belief amongst the townspeople currently is that the gator was probably someone’s pet that was either thrown out or escaped. That was also the reckoning in 1950.

The American alligator’s natural habitat encompasses most of the southeastern United States from the Carolinas and Florida to the eastern one-third of Texas and as far north as Arkansas, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  One website, <www.pnx.com/gator>, says alligators grow about one foot per year until they reach 11 feet long, which would make the local reptile about six years old.