“The Alligator on 307, mid 50`s”

     In the mid 50`s we read in paper where the UK biology class made a field trip to Murphy Pond to catch cottonmouths.  The professor claimed afterward that the cottonmouths had run all other species out.  Not believing this, I think it was Eddie Roberts, Ronnie Beck, Frank and Wes McClure and me who made a field trip to disprove his supposition.  When we got there we found a student who missed the school trip and had to make it up.   He was sitting on side of the road ready to go in.  We told him to come with us to Beulah store to get a sandwich and he could go with us.

     At the store, a trapper, heard us talking and wanted to show us something out back.  He had a foot nailed to the wall to air cure.  He said it was in his trap and was a monster turtle for us to be careful.

     We found every kind of snake native to bottoms but the cottonmouth.  There were places that the grass seemed to be floating and we were in about two inches of water in the grass.  I was carrying a six foot walking pole and I pushed it down into the grass and when my nand was against the ground I palm pushed it the rest of the way.    That was when we heard a terrible roar nearby and decided it was time for us to head out.  The student was disappointed not to return to school with a cottonmouth so we took him to the slough near Crowley south west of Robert Washburn place.  There we filled his cage with cottonmouths on Bayou de Chein.

     A few weeks later a box truck (milk truck I think) ran over something on 307 at Murphy Pond.  Thinking it was a log, he turned around and went back to move it.  Instead he found that he had run over and killed an alligator. It hung for a day from a power pole in front of the Strand Theater.  It only had three feet.  It had one stub where it cut its foot off in a trap and the ones left were a match to what we saw behind the store.

I thought it was about 7 ft long but a friend told me recently he thought it was a little smaller.  It was at least six foot and I do remember that it was intimidating looking.  A few yrs later at the St. Louis zoo I heard an alligator roar and it was the same sound we had heard.  Most thought it had been released by a side show but I doubt that on hwy 307.  I doubt it could have survived our winter so I suspect it rode on drift between tows up the river to the creek and wandered up creek to the pond.