BONDING WITH PARK’S FAVORITE ALLIGATORS
Gatorland staff say animals have personalities
Buddy is an alligator with his own man cave. The 13-foot-8-inch gator has set up court in a shady, shallow area on the north end of Gatorland’s breeding marsh.
Do not mess with Buddy and his space.
“This is breeding season for gators right now. Other gators are going in and trying to overtake it from them. So, he’s had his hands full the last few months here,” says Brandon Fisher, who has worked with Gatorland’s animals for 15 years.
“But he is a good pal,” Fisher says. “He’s just my favorite.”
Although alligators are a common sight in Florida, their distinctive personalities don’t always shine through with humans. Through careful interactions, Gatorland workers frequently find an individual animal that they bond with. We chatted with five handlers and experts there about their reptile relationships.
Buddy & Brandon
“He’s probably one of the most gentle gators that I’ve worked with,” Fisher says of Buddy.
“But when I’m not working with him, he is probably one of the toughest alligators we have out here in the breeding marsh,” says Fisher, director of media relations. “He lets everybody know that he is the king of the swamp here.”
Fisher believes Buddy is the
biggest of Gatorland’s gators, weighing in at about 1,200 pounds. He’s craftily set up camp where many visitors stop to feed the alligators.
“He’s got great personality, huge head. He opens his jaws wide there,” Fisher says. “Every day is an adventure with him.”
Chester & Donny
Chester is another of Gatorland’s big boys. At last measurement, he was about 2 inches shorter than Buddy. Gatorland visitors can see Chester in his own private enclosure near the park’s entrance, and they can read about his past adventures in Tampa.
Chester likes Donny Alderelli, who likes him back.
“I think me and him connect a lot,” says, Alderelli, who is Gatorland’s reptile manager. “I just kind of work with him a lot more because he was misunderstood. … As young teen I was misunderstood as well.”
The alligator got a reputation for attacking pets before moving to Gatorland. But Alderelli points the finger at people who started feeding Chester their dinner leftovers and bits of fish.
“Alligators don’t know any better. They started looking at people as the bringers of food,” he says. “Chester was just being a gator, having to grab these dogs because some other person broke the rules and wound up feeding him. He just was doing what he thought was the right thing to do.”
Alderelli and other Gatorland staffers are Chester’s bringers of food now. He goes into the closure with the alligator and lobs raw chicken to him. Chester sometimes hisses in anticipation. He catches the bird midair with a dramatic chomp. They both value consistency.
“You know what you’re going to get with Chester. You walk in there every time is the same thing. He doesn’t really sugarcoat anything. He doesn’t lie about things,” Alderelli says. “You go in there, and he’s chomping, he’s tail thrashing and he’s jumping out of the water. And I love it because it’s consistent.”
Buster & Michael
Michael Brown says he was going through a rough patch in life and was thinking about looking for another job,
“I walked in the exhibit one day, and Buster came over and he swam right up into it. And he burped and, like, we just connected from there on,” says Brown, Adventure Tours guide.
He says he can identify more than 100 of the attraction’s gators in the marsh by sight, including Buster.
“He’s got these little tiny beady frog eyes that stick up,” Brown says. “He’s got some white marks on his face, kind of scars. He’s also missing some toes on his right foot, but it’s all part of being a gator.”
Brown can call out Buster’s name and get his attention.
“Buster is not my dog or my cat; you can’t domesticate them,” he says. “You can just condition them and get them to kind of work in your program. But it’s really their show.”
Sultan & Mike
Park director Mike Hileman knows Sultan’s sweet spot. The Nile crocodile likes to be scratched under the chin, and that’s something most humans shouldn’t attempt.
Their routine started about 20 years ago during a crocodile show, Hileman says.
“We got him up on that rock right there and one of the guests yelled, ‘Bet you won’t pet him!’ Well, I mean, so I was like, ‘Bet I can,’” he says.
“I was expecting him to try and go after my hand, but he never did. He didn’t raise his head up. He’s just kind of tilted it. I kept going,” he says. He leans into the motion, sort of like when a dog is getting his belly rubbed.
Sultan allows Hileman to have body contact in other areas, too.
“He lets me, if I need to, scrub him. I can straddle him and sit on him scrub them with a little brush. He’s extremely laid-back for crocodile. That’s more alligator behavior,” Hileman says.
“They recognize people, sounds, your clothes. They have name recognition, they can do certain commands,” he says. “And just like people, some are sharper than others.”
Blackwater & Savannah
Blackwater, Savannah Boan’s favorite gator, died earlier this year.
“He was a little bit different than most of our alligators here,” she says. “He seemed to have a kinder soul.”
They first bonded when she was watching him during Gatorland’s Adventure Hour program. Blackwater would hang back in the crowd. Boan, who is Gatorland’s social-media director and works with alligators and crocodiles, would make sure he got fed.
“I started feeding him from the side instead of in the front, which meant he didn’t have to go through the crowd,” she says. “It just kind of developed like that.”
They would have afterhours quality time together, sometimes laying side by side, she says.
Blackwater made appearances on Gatorland’s YouTube channel, where there’s a video tribute to him now. Boan says she took several days off after the death.
“Sometimes I find myself looking for him, and he’s not here,” she says. “I mean, there’s so many other ones to love, you know, and there’s so many other ones that I do love so much.
“He was just my very favorite.”