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Show must go on, so gator must go

The 9-foot invader delays a performance at Weeki Wachee Springs and is removed.

By ASJYLYN LODER
Published May 27, 2006

WEEKI WACHEE — Come Swim with the Alligators! proved a short-lived new attraction at The Only City of Live Mermaids.

With the mermaids understandably keen to keep the “live’’ in “mermaid,’’ Weeki Wachee Springs’ 9-foot intruder was quickly dispatched before a cheering crowd Saturday morning.

“I should have charged an extra $5 today,” joked park manager and Mayor Robyn Anderson, a former mermaid.  “You can’t really go to Wet N’ Wild or Typhoon Lagoon and see this.”

The venturesome gator began poking around the park Friday afternoon. Saturday, lifeguards kept an eye on it, to make sure it stayed downriver, and restricted swimmers to shallow water. But late Saturday morning, the emboldened beast nosed its way into Buccaneer Bay, the attraction’s clear-water swimming hole and headwaters of the 12-mile Weeki Wachee River.

“The kids ran up here, 'Mom! There’s an alligator out there!’” said Christine Rizzuto  , a park regular.

The park’s staff closed the swimming hole, and swimmers scurried to the beach. Then the gator took a few passes by the windows where the mermaids have their show, delaying the 11 a.m. performance.

Inside the 500-seat auditorium, 16 feet below the spring’s surface, spectators stared at drawn curtains, unaware of the guest performer.

“First they said it was a natural problem, and I didn’t know what that meant,’’ said Tania Kussel, of Tampa, who had taken her daughter and two sons to see the underwater show. “Then they said it was a technical problem.’’

The “”natural problem’’ had by then settled in for a snooze behind the floating dock. That’s where trapper Darrell Plank caught him.

“They caught him with a big rope,” said Haley Rizzuto, 7, annoyed at losing swimming time under the hot, bright sun. “They had duct tape around his mouth.”

More than 600 guests had by then crowded into the park, and many of them lined the beach to watch.

The park held its first show in 1947. The occasional manatee is a welcome guest, and one such visitor enjoyed a mermaid kiss that is memorialized on one of the park’s postcards. Even alligators are one of the advertised pleasures of the park’s riverboat cruise.

But they rarely stray into the swimming hole, Anderson said.

“I thought it was a good show,” said John Gluch  , of Spring Hill, who has been coming to the park for a decade and recalled only one other gator sighting. “It’s not every day you see alligator wrestling.’’

Plank tied the gator’s claws, wrapped its snout and eyes with tape, and carted it off in a skiff. The angry gator lashed and hissed while Plank readied to load it onto his truck. “C’mon buddy,’’ Plank said quietly, pushing it back down in the boat, “Calm down.’’

Plank shooed away his 11-year-old son, Donovan, who had clambered up on the truck bed to watch. “He shouldn’t be here,” the elder Plank explained. “We were on our way to go fishing.”

Donovan crossed his arms and stared fiercely at the bound beast, screwing up his sunburned nose. “I’m not scared of him.”

The gator was Plank’s first of the day. But he shook his head wistfully at his unused fishing rods. There would probably be more.

Saturday was a busy day for the 35 or so licensed trappers kept on call by the Alligator Nuisance Hotline, operator James Jablonski said.  Lately, the service has been fielding 250 calls a day. By 4 p.m. Saturday, it had taken nearly 100 calls.

Jablonski attributes the upsurge to a recent spate of deadly alligator attacks. On May 14, an alligator killed Annmarie Campbell, 23, while she was snorkeling in shallow water in Ocala National Forest.  The body of Judy Cooper, 43, was found the same day in Pinellas County.

Earlier that week, authorities caught a 400-pound, 9-foot-6-inch alligator with the arms of Yovy Suarez Jiminez in its stomach. The 28-year-old’s body had been found days earlier.

Despite the recent uptick, fatal alligator attacks are rare in Florida, with only 17 recorded since 1948, said Gary Morse, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. That number doesn’t include the most recent three, pending the medical examiner’s ruling.

Saturday’s Weeki Wachee adventure ended peacefully, with no injuries, except to the alligator.

Rizzuto commended the park staff for their swift response. “”It was handled very well,’’ she said. Her children quickly recovered from any fright, and leapt back into the spring.

The cruising gator didn’t scare off park guests, either. Within hours of its capture, nearly 3,000 visitors had passed through the gate.

“There’s not a lot of action around here,’’ Rizzuto said. “”This was the big thing this weekend.’’

Asjylyn Loder can be reached at aloder@sptimes.com or (352) 754-6127.

[Last modified May 27, 2006, 21:50:47]