Soccer Ball-Eating Alligator’s Stomach Contents Reveal an Unusual Diet
OutdoorHub Reporters 05.27.12
An alligator with a taste for sports equipment had to be put down last Monday simply for its size. The 13-foot gator fit the criteria for South Carolina’s harvest program and given its size, it was also a safety issue. At Jarvis Creek Park on Hilton Head Island, children play soccer close enough to the animal’s habitat that the gator grabbed a stray soccer ball with its jaws and it wouldn’t let it loose.
For hours the gator held onto the ball, but he wouldn’t swallow it nor give it up. It wasn’t until Critter Management put a hook in him that he spit it out. After he was put down, trappers opened up his stomach to reveal some interesting contents.
He had eaten two baseballs, one tennis ball and two other unidentifiable balls that had already been partially digested.
An entire 4-foot alligator was being digested in his stomach. He just didn’t seem to care what he ate. The rest of the stomach contents revealed 53 fishing lures, a half-pound of lead sinkers, two turtles, a beer can and 48 rocks.
“People don’t understand that this gator could not be relocated,” Mark Carinus with Critter Management said. “It would eat any smaller gator. It snapped up the soccer ball at the water’s edge and it could easily snatch a dog or a small child.”
Critter Management has found other gators in the process of being digested in a bigger gator’s stomach before. Often, they find gators covered in teeth marks from territorial battles with other gators.
The following video was taken the day that the gator snatched up the ball with pictures of the alligator and commentary from soccer players that day. He was put down and not relocated because he was too large to relocate under state law.
