Week in review

By Times staff writer

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 3, 2001

GATOR IN THE GARAGE: Betty Anne Houghton had just finished a Tuesday morning bike ride in her Pebble Creek neighborhood when she noticed the 8-foot alligator. She saw it head into a garage, where Cathy Sparenberg was sitting in her Mercury Cougar applying makeup. Sparenberg felt a thud against the door as Houghton ran to warn her. "She thought it was a cat or a dog running by," Houghton said.

Sparenberg backed the car safely out of the garage and left the gator for a Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission trapper, who dispatched it in short order.

It was trapper Billy Harter's 37th gator last month. He had nearly 100 calls in May, but most of the time, the gator flees before he arrives. Authorities say the persistent drought has forced gators to seek freshwater outside their natural habitat. Encounters between gators and humans are becoming increasingly common in areas such as New Tampa, where once-swampy terrain is sprouting new homes, golf courses and shopping centers.

The 7-foot, 10-inch gator in Sparenberg's garage was killed.

TRAFFIC CHANGES FOR BUSCH GARDENS: Busch Gardens has closed a 20-year-old entrance along E Busch Boulevard. "I have seen mothers push strollers across there," said park spokesman Gerard Hoeppner. "It's really a safety issue for our guests and our employees."

But some neighbors suspect that something else motivated the park to close the entrance. "This is totally corporate greed," said Johnnie Compton, 46. Like many of his neighbors on Wick Place, just yards from the side entrance, Compton charges Busch Gardens guests $5 to park on his lawn on weekends, a dollar less than the park charges. Neighbors say they can make up to $160 on a weekend, depending on how many cars their lawns hold.

Restaurants along E Busch near the side entrance, which draw heavily on park guests, could suffer too. "We'll be able to stay open, but it's going to hurt us," said Juan Young, a manager at KFC. And some customers with annual passes dread the longer walk to the southwest entrance at McKinley Drive and Busch in the summer heat.

But Hoeppner said some neighbors have complained about the parking near their homes. "I think, in the interests of being a good neighbor, that should play into it as well," he said. What's more, city codes forbid residents from charging motorists to park on their lawns, except for special events near Raymond James Stadium.

LANDMARK GRADUATION FOR SICKLES: From the obscurity of a freshman class at a school just coming into existence to the proud class of 2001, the graduates of Sickles High School blazed a trail that ended Tuesday night at the University of South Florida Sun Dome. Sickles opened in 1997, and this graduating class of 654 students was its first freshman-to-senior class. It was also the school's largest ever, and the largest graduating class in Hillsborough this year. The seniors won $4.2-million in scholarships, and more than 55 percent of them finished with a 3.0 grade point average or higher.

Student body president Chris Brown said the responsibility was on his class to create a student culture at Sickles. "It was interesting, because when we were freshmen, we didn't have seniors to look up to," Brown said. "We didn't have any traditions our freshman year, and now we have a foundation. . . . I'll always come back, though. I really love this school."

School life at Sickles hasn't always been easy. Shortly after it opened, a 30-student brawl erupted in the cafeteria and resulted in injuries and arrests. Built to accommodate 1,965 students, it opened with 2,300. Double sessions, the bane of early risers, soon followed.

Sickles' first principal, David Smith, was reassigned after a year and a half, and his replacement, Nuri Ayres, was greeted with a bomb threat on her first day. Rumors of more threats led students to hold an anti-violence rally in March. "When the rumors ran rampant," Ayres said, "it was this class that said, "Not in my school.' And through your efforts, you helped change the shape of your school."

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