CREATURE FROM THE CITY LAGOON |

Trapper Wayne Parker has been in the business of wrestling alligators from swamps, rivers and lakes for more than a quarter-century now.

So when he got a call that he needed to remove a nuisance gator from a City of Laurel sewage lagoon, it’s doubtful he guessed it would be a record-setter. But that was the surprise he found waiting for him lurking in the murky, greenish water right inside the city that night.

“It’s the biggest one I ever caught,” Parker said.

And, as it turns out, it was the third-largest gator harvested in state history, at 13 feet, 1 inch and tipping the scales at 740 pounds. Trapper and his son Bo Parker got the beast on Thursday night, just before the Fourth of July weekend.

Parker said he couldn’t disclose where the gator was caught because it was a private client. But several sources with knowledge of the big gator said it was in a sewage lagoon right beside the interstate, near Wayne Farms.

“He had gotten so big, people were starting to get worried, so we had to go remove him,” Parker said.

The behemoth didn’t have as much fight in him as many smaller gators Parker has dealt with over the years.

“We set a hook for him and after he got on there, I shot him,” Parker said. “He wasn’t really that bad.”

Bo Parker with the beast after the fight.

That is, until they had to get him out of the water. That took the help of a four-wheeler, a pickup and a “stretched line,” he said.

The recent death of a toddler at a Disney World resort, who was killed by an alligator that had become accustomed to people, likely contributed to the client’s nervousness, Parker said.

“I’m sure that had something to do with it,” he said. “I feel like he had gotten used to being fed by people. He wasn’t scared at all. He sat there and watched me with the hook.”

Parker said he gave away the meat and would sell the hide. He has been removing gators and other nuisance animals for 27 years and for the state for 20 years. He said this hasn’t been a bad year for gators when it comes to his nuisance animal removal business.

“Lots of skunks and bats,” he said with a chuckle, “but no more gators than usual.”

It is against the law for people to feed alligators in Mississippi.

The longest gator ever harvested in Mississippi was a 14-foot, 1/4-incher on a private island on the Mississippi River and the second longest was 13-7-3/4 also harvested from the Mississippi River by Ken and Angelia Rivers, their son Destin and his wife Landri, and daughter Kennedy and her boyfirend Jacob Lee, all of Ellisville. Both big gators were taken on the same day last August.

The Ellisville team of Brandon Maskew and Allen and Maya Purvis caught a record-setting female gator — 10 feet, 295.3 pounds — in 2013.

Permits for the upcoming alligator hunting season go on sale on July 19 on the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks website at www.ms.gov/mdwfp/alligator.

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