From wrestling customers to gators, then to science

ORLANDO, Fla. — Nick Clark was 33 and coming off a $72,000-a-year salary when he made a radical career change — wrestling alligators at Gatorland for $6 an hour.

He said his previous employer had fired him when, “burnt out,” he refused to sell an AC unit to a couple who didn’t need it. To Clark, grappling with gators intrigued him.

“I always tell people that Floridians who have their AC broken in the summer time are a lot scarier than alligators,” he said. “People get downright ugly.”

The Leesburg resident, 57, is now a reptile specialist at the Orianne Center for Indigo Conservation in the Seminole State Forest in northeast Lake County. In a research project funded by federal grant money, he’s helping prepare about 200 Eastern indigo snakes at the nature center for the breeding season. It’s the country’s biggest restoration effort of the endangered serpent.

Many working in natural sciences got their start with professional degrees. But Clark took a different path, risking life and limb for Gatorland crowds up to seven times a day.

“It’s easy to know more about reptiles than the general public,” he said of the work. “It nourishes the ego.”

Handling a venomous cottonmouth on a recent weekday, he pointed to the snake’s nearby offspring conceived independent of any mate.

“It’s called parthenogenesis,” Clark said of the viper. “There’s some recorded cases of it happening in cottonmouths.”

Years before his job as a well-paid factory appliance technician, Clark had zero interest in lizards or reptiles. His snake-owning neighbor growing up was considered “odd” by many.

But that aspect is its biggest selling point, he said. The pay wasn’t great, but he enjoyed the work.

“My manager said, ‘They’re here to see it, not you,’” Clark said. “And that took a lot of pressure off me.”

“Everybody that does it gets bit,” he said of alligator wrestling.

The sensation is like getting your hand caught in a car door with fangs.

“I don’t remember the teeth,” he said. “I just remember the pressure.”