Before it became Gator Country back in 2005, the Beaumont, Texas facility was an alligator farm. Breeding and raising alligators is legal in Texas, as long as you've got the appropriate permits and abide by the strict regulations. After all, when you're dealing with large, fast, and potentially lethal animals, following the rules is essential.
Unfortunately, the owner of the alligator farm that eventually became Gator Country wasn't particularly interested in that. The farm started out on the up and up, but soon enough its owner began to go out and illegally capture nuisance gators in the wild, transporting them back to his property while the population grew to more than 1,000 alligators.
After a while, the farm and the gators were abandoned and left to fend for themselves on the property. Alligators are cannibalistic by nature, and that characteristic along with illegal gator poaching whittled the population down to almost nothing. By the time the property was purchased by the people who would eventually turn it into Gator Country, only two alligators were left: Big Al and Allie.
Austin College junior volleyball player Dakota Jeffcoat grew up in the Beaumont area – specifically Sour Lake, located a bit to the west. She'd been to Gator Country as a kid, and has always been interested in animals and zoology. Of course, on her first trip to Gator Country when she was younger, she probably didn't imagine she'd eventually be working so closely with Big Al, the second largest alligator in the state of Texas at 13 feet, four inches and more than 1,000 pounds.
This past summer, Jeffcoat worked as an intern at Gator Country, after finding the opportunity on the Texas A&M job board. When the internship started, the folks who operate Gator Country wasted little time putting her and the other interns straight into the mix. Upon her arrival, she was quickly handling snakes and gators.
"With many internships, you're off on the side learning," said Jeffcoat. "But this one, they throw you in and you have to learn as you go, and how to handle situations."
Those situations include capturing nuisance gators, which are alligators in the wild that are typically defined as four feet in length or more, and pose a danger to humans. Jeffcoat herself, along with the six other interns she worked with, went on several nuisance calls over the three months she worked there. Nuisance gators can range in size, from tiny hatchlings all the way up to nearly 14 feet.
Now, Jeffcoat wasn't along on the nuisance call for the 14-footer (13 feet, 11.5 inches, technically). That was Big Tex, the largest gator in Texas and the world record holder for the largest live alligator ever caught in the wild. Like Big Al, he resides at Gator Country, and it took 19 men to pull him out of the Trinity wildlife refuge, with four interns working to catch him (with the help of a tree, which was used to anchor him).
Big Tex is aggressive and territorial, though that didn't stop Jeffcoat from hand feeding him once. Big Al is aggressive, as well, which makes sense – when you're one of the last two gators standing from a group of well over 1,000, it's certainly not because you aren't capable of defending yourself. The 85-year-old Big Al is a survivor, who even survived a shotgun blast in his shoulder back in the 1980s. He also survived a death roll by another gator named Igor… and then eventually got Igor with a death roll of his own. Igor, unlike Big Al, did not survive.
All of the interns get to work with Big Al, and Jeffcoat has video footage of her 'jaw popping' the giant gator (which involves darting her hand through the opened mouth of the alligator, just before it snaps its jaws shut), as well as giving him a kiss on the top of his nose ("to show how aggressive he can be, and then the kiss is to scare people").
Fortunately, Jeffcoat managed to avoid any injuries from Big Al and Big Tex, but she didn't come through her internship completely unscathed. She was bit by a younger alligator and tail whipped by a 6-footer, and she has the scars to prove it. She even got death rolled by a five and a half foot gator, but fortunately his jaws were taped up, so he was unable to clamp down on her. If he hadn't been, it could have meant serious trouble, since an alligator is able to apply 3,000 pounds of pressure per square inch with their powerful jaws.
Of course, the internship was about more than the adventure surrounding working with alligators, snakes, and other reptiles. Jeffcoat and the other interns worked to educate the park's visitors, as well as taking some of the animals out on educational trips around the area. Jeffcoat and another intern would often take a 4-footer out on these educational trips, and this particular gator was so laid back that they'd let him roam free in the car and snuggle him, which earned them some strange looks from the people who saw a gator strolling around their car when they stopped for gas or food.
It's a testament to the fact that, while some gators are aggressive and dangerous to humans, by nature these creatures are afraid of people. It's only when they lose that fear that they'll attack, which comes from people feeding them in the wild, or from the gators getting a bit too comfortable with humans in general. That's a big part of why it's illegal to feed gators in the wild. In fact, the fine for doing so is an incredible $1,500 per foot. So if you decide to, say, feed an 8-footer in the wild and you get caught, it's going to do some significant damage to your bank account.
Eventually, Jeffcoat would like to earn a PhD in zoology, and would love to run a wildlife sanctuary or go out and conduct research in the natural environments of certain animals, and study them in nature. Right now, she's got an ongoing study in place at Gator Country to see how the coloration of an alligator's environment affects their skin color. Gators, after all, can mimic their surroundings like chameleons. Her study involves gators being raised in three different tanks – one blacked out, one whited out, and one clear – to see what kind of impact the different settings will have.
Jeffcoat is also fascinated by the healing abilities of alligators, which are not affected by cancer and have remarkable immune systems. They also have the kind of ability to heal that you generally only see in comic books. Allie, Big Al's "wife", was attacked by the latter and had both part of her tail bitten off and her midsection ripped open from the shoulder to the gut. Astonishingly, within two weeks, she was fully healed.
Once Thanksgiving, Christmas, and JanTerm roll around, Jeffcoat will head back down to Beaumont to check in on her study, and her alligators (including two that she got to name – Raven and Griffin – after gaining their trust enough to let her hand-feed them). And judging by the way she talks about alligators, it won't be the last time she works with these old and magnificent creatures.
"It'd be awesome to work with alligators forever," says Jeffcoat. "I'd probably lose a finger, but it'd be worth it."