THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 7, 1995 TAG: 9506070043
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LAWRENCE MADDRY
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
IF YOU HAVE never watched a man walk around with a 300-pound alligator in his arms, this could be your last chance.
Alligators are coming to the Sixth Annual Bayou Boogaloo and Cajun Food Festival at Town Point Park this weekend, but there won't be any gator rasslin. What we will have is a show called ``Kachunga and the Alligator.''
I was glad to learn that there will be no alligator wrestling because wrestling is not something alligators like to do. The usual method is to wire the gator's jaw shut prior to the match, which isn't sporting.
People who wrestle alligators will tell you the gator doesn't mind wrestling and actually enjoys it.
Which is easy to say, because no one has talked with an alligator about it. I really don't believe that the ordinary alligator lies on his river mudbank and says to himself:
``I would give a month's pay if some big man would come by here and wrestle with me to take my mind off this dull and boring riverside life.''
It just doesn't happen.
The Festevents-sponsored show coming to Town Point Park will feature three alligators. Two of the gators will weigh about 300 pounds each. The third alligator is a baby, only 2 feet long, that children can touch.
Gerald Hobby, who produces the alligator show at Sunken Gardens in St. Petersburg, Fla., says the Kachunga show coming here will be educational.
``There's no wrestling in it, no match, no winner or loser,'' he said.
Educating people around here about alligators is a good idea. We tend to go crazy over them in these parts, editorial writers included. Back in 1956, an alligator of unknown origin appeared in the Lafayette River in Norfolk. The editorial about it began: ``The four-foot alligator that has been seen each morning . . . '' Any fool knows they've all got four feet.
Another confusing alligator story was published in our papers in 1965 when two teenagers from Norfolk, fishing in a swamp near Norway Place, hooked a 35-inch alligator. ``A man offered us $5 to throw it in bed with his wife before he got in,'' one of the teenagers told a reporter.
Before he ``got in'' to the house or the bed?
There are gators aplenty in the Tar Heel State: in rivers, streams, golf-course ponds, even drainage ditches along the coast.
And although smaller than their Florida cousins, the Carolina gator can scare people out of their wits. A small alligator wandered into a Little League baseball game in Wilmington, N.C., a few years back, ending the game for fans and players. ``Some of the boys didn't even bother to use the exits, they just climbed over the centerfield fence,'' an eyewitness reported.
Alligator mogul Gerald Hobby said he buys alligators for his shows that are being sold for slaughter, keeps them 14 days, and gives them to zoos or donates them to Sunken Gardens.
He says alligators don't kill people. There are a million and a half alligators in Florida and if the gators were killers, the whole state would be in a frenzy, he claims.
``We only had 18 attacks against humans last year,'' he said. ``Usually it was a case of a mother protecting her babies. Normally, if an alligator sees a human, it heads the opposite way.''
No mothers will be used in the ``Kachunga and the Alligator'' show this weekend. But Kachunga, described as ``an American Bushman,'' will demonstrate the Seminole Indian technique of moving a 300-pound alligator from one place to another without hurting it.
Alligator moving is a valuable skill in Florida. And Kachunga will be able to make a fortune removing alligators from Florida swimming pools when he retires, I suspect. Maybe he should call his future business Gator Aid.
Hobby says alligator moving is a clumsy and back-breaking effort, like trying to carry a piano with 80 sharp teeth up a flight of stairs.
Alligator moving. Talk about an elevating experience. And right on the waterfront this weekend. Is it any wonder we're known as the Xanadu of Chesapeake Bay? ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
``Kachunga and the Alligator'' is part of the Bayou Boogaloo and
Cajun Food Fest at Norfolk's Town Point Park.
by CNB