The American Alligator, a conservation success story.
5:00AM
Friday July 25, 2008
Brandon Hall and Lindsey Hord 'harvest' a nest. Photo /AP
It's 7am in the marsh and like some sort of cigar-chomping swamp cowboy, biologist Lindsey Hord is about to reach for something that could cost him a few fingers - or worse.
It's the first day of Florida's annual alligator egg collection programme, a yearly ritual to replenish stocks for the state's gator farmers.
Hord and several other airboat pilots fire up their engines and slowly glide out into a canal. The he roars up to a small island and peers into the brush for a nest that, to the untrained eye, looks just like a patch of wet dirt. Bingo.
He kneels beside the mound, carefully pulling apart the mass of dark, damp weeds. Over his shoulder, just a few metres away, mama gator's bulbous eyes float ominously on the water's surface.
He gently pulls the eggs from the dirt and places them carefully in a plastic bin lined with muck to keep them warm.
To some, this might seem, well, crazy. For Hord, who helps co-ordinate alligator management in a state with more than a million of the reptiles, it's another day at the office....
