Recently an acquaintance of mine, reported he had been ‘alligator hunting’ in Arkansas;while on a run between Little Rock and Memphis [:-,]
No reason not to believe him. After all, how many times have you heard of a trespassing alligator run over by a freight train. [4:-)] A big nine foot alligator would be no match for for some Big GE’s, and their train, at track speed [:-,]
Link to video of the remains:
http://wreg.com/2013/05/14/train-runs-over-huge-alligator-in-st-francis-co-ar/
The alligator certainly had a bad experience–but it is unable to learn from it. Too bad.
Why does the mountain goat cross the highway? So he can go back–that is what my wife and I saw several years ago when we stopped on the way form Lake Louise to Jasper, Albarta. He went back and forth several times.
True story.
A bunch of us were traveling from Chicago to New Orleans in an ICG business car tied to the back of “The City”. It was a old heavyweight car with six axles, an open observation platform, and a sitting area with large windows just ahead of the platform. We were on the last lap into NOLA in the morning. I was seated inside the car watching the bayou fly by and listening in on the railroad radio.
Someone, I presume it was the engineer, yelled over the radio “Alligator on the Tracks.” I looked out the back and very soon there was the only wild gator I’ve ever seen. (Or want to see.) He/she was still on the track and seemed be intact. The critter was flopping around wildly, completely leaving the ground at times.
The flopping gator receded at 79 MPH and I have no idea if it lived or died. I assume it eventually died from being run over by The City of New Orleans.
OOPS My bad — i thought you were hunting Alcoa aligators on the A&M RR. ? ? ?
Aluminum reptiles?
The CofG hump yard in Macon is built on (next to?) a swamp. Gators appear not infrequently. NS has a gator guy on retainer to come haul them away.
Do the gators at least keep the weed weasels away?
I didn’t think alligators could live that far north, as it were. I’d assume the winters are a little too cold for them, even in Arkansas.
Well as an old friend used to say, “It’s a wasted day if you don’t learn something new!”
A six footer trapped in Lake Lanier, 50 miles north of Atlanta last year.
They usually don’t get up past the Fall Line in GA - Macon is about it… But, I do remember the report of the gator in Lanier. About once a year, you hear of a smallish adult gator being spotted in some neighbor hood pond. Made you think a bit when you were floating around in the lake.
Now that I recall it, there was a small alligator caught in a pond here in Richmond Va. about a year or two ago. It’s suspected it was a souvenir alligator that was dumped when it got too big. Local fish and game people doubted it would have survived the winter. It can get cold around here.