Crocodile tears over the alligator

Thinking of buying alligator for Christmas? Don’t.

That’s the word this season — and the media are spreading it.

“People should be EMBARRASSED to wear alligator items and stores should be ashamed to sell them,” writes author Robert Gannon in a national magazine.

“What’s needed is a campaign similar to the one that 60 years ago saved the egret. Women were paying high prices for plumes but became aware they were helping kill off the bird. Plumes went out of style; federal laws were passed the egret was saved from extinction.

“Surely the alligator deserves as much.”

A recent television documentary urged an outright boycott.

Not only are poachers illegally killing the creatures off, claimed the narrator, but the swamps are drying up and survival is becoming almost impossible.

“Not so,” says Dr. Earl Herald, associate director of the Steinhart Aquarium. “Alligators are much less abundant than they were in the Southern states, but they’re far from extinct.

“A boycott wouldn’t help save the American alligator, the one everyone’s concerned about, because most of the skins we use come from Java and South America.”

Wherever they come from, there’s not likely to be a run on alligator items this season.

One, prices are prohibitive! Tiny alligator coin purses sell for $80 at Mark Cross on Post street; ladies’ bags run from $400 to $1000. There’s even a women’s toiletry case, priced at $1200.

And the zoom continues. “Alligators are getting rarer and rarer,” says store manager Claire Spearman. “Every shipment we get is about $100 higher than the previous one.”

Secondly, more and more women are tired of being stuck with highpriced alligator shoes or purses, out of style but not worn out.

“My shoes cost $130 eight years ago,” wails an I. Magnin’s customer. “They look like new, but they’ve got pointed toes. I wouldn’t wear them to the supermarket!”

The answer, of course is fake alligator, which can fool the most practiced eye. Prices are low, styles are great, and if nothing else — some alligator somewhere in a Florida swamp MAY live to see Christmas, ’69.

This column originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle on Dec. 13, 1968.