Wiregrass Alligator Wrangler Loves the Wild Life

Stillness and darkness surround the 14-foot aluminum john boat, disturbed only by croaking frogs and the occasional splash of a catfish.
But Burks Laney can see and hear more.
He sees the red eyes staring at him, watching as he invades their watery home. The fish are biting in the lake, but unfortunately a larger creature has been biting the fish. And when the paths of alligators and people meet in the Wiregrass, Laney is the man the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Game and Fish Division calls.
Laney is the area's alligator nuisance control hunter, as evidenced by the green sign on his red pickup truck. Each year, he captures an average of 60 alligators, mostly in the months of April through June in southeast Alabama.
Alligators may be associated more with the state of Florida, but they aren't exactly an uncommon sight in Alabama creeks, rivers and swamps.
Laney caught a 10-foot, 400-pound alligator that had killed two calves recently near the Geneva and Houston county line. Five alligators were captured in one trip to a Cottonwood spring, and he came back from a trip to Columbia with a 12-foot, 700-pounder.
Retired orthopedic surgeon Dr. John Haley and wife Rebecca said while their son Chad was feeding their horses, he saw a 6-foot alligator in a pond on their land in the Ardilla community.
The alligator has killed a couple of black swans, two geese, a white duck and a couple of mallard ducks. The Haleys have kept their two golden retrievers in a pen until the animal is caught.
"Our grandchildren come out to visit us from time to time, so this really scares us," Haley said. "He's a nuisance, but I'm awful proud there's somebody around to help us."
Laney has set some snares and traps in hopes of catching the culprit.
"All these big gators now are the ones that hatched out while they were protected as an endangered species," said Laney, who was appropriately wearing a Florida Gators cap as he worked on rebuilding his Taylor taxidermy shop. The shop burned to the ground March 26, along with a freezer stocked with gator bait and more than 171 stuffed animal heads.
He's dividing his attention today between his shop and the night's trip to Elamville and Abbeville, where he would catch two alligators. One of the gators, an 8-footer, was caught in a family's yard in Abbeville.
When the conservation officer receives a nuisance report of an alligator, he issues a permit to Laney to capture the animal. The conservation officer then decides if the alligator will be relocated or killed. The larger alligators are usually destroyed because they will most likely just return to the area where they were caught, Laney said.
After making the capture, the alligator hunter completes a report that describes where the animal was caught. Laney keeps one copy and sends the other copy to Montgomery.
"It's not a real job, and most people wouldn't have it because you can't make any money," he said. "But I get to meet all kinds of people, and most of them are law-abiding, upstanding people."
To catch an alligator, Laney might use steel traps, snare traps or a harpoon with basically any type of bait, such as deer meat, squirrel, crow, rabbit and even road kill.
"There are all kinds of ways you can catch them," he said. "It depends on the circumstances."
The most humane way, he said, is by throwing 4-by-4-by-8-foot cages into the water.
As the area's alligator nuisance control hunter, Laney must have a yellow tag for each alligator he captures. He's also responsible for picking up any alligators killed by poachers or automobiles.
Laney was born on Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River and has hunted and fished since the age of 8. He's been the area alligator nuisance control hunter since 1991.
He said alligators want no part of human beings unless they've been conditioned to think otherwise by being fed.
But Rambler, Laney's small 13-year-old black terrier, knows the alligators in his yard could see him as dinner. He barks incessantly at the small 5-foot alligator Laney has captured, but keeps his distance from the larger one.
"He's terrified of the big alligators," Laney said. "He respects them. He knows they'll get him."
Although Laney has caught literally hundreds of alligators, only one has bitten him. A 9-foot, 7-inch, 174-pounder that he caught in Bellwood chomped on his arm last June. The large gator, which was bound in Laney's yard, freed his jaws, leaving Laney with a wound that required 20 stitches.
A 288-pound gator also busted the back window of his pickup truck.
"Alligators won't bite you unless they have to, but if they do, they won't turn loose," Laney said. "They'll start rolling and tear your arm off. We had to shoot this one to get him loose. The only reason I didn't lose my arm was I didn't move.
"But they're not aggressive. They won't come up and try to bite people or jump on the boat. But if you hem him up and get close to him, he'll bite you. One thing we tell kids is there aren't any animals in our area that are dangerous if you leave them alone."

Gift of Bible Lives On

The letter addressed to Ella Foy Riley arrived a week before Christmas and what would have been her 76th birthday.
Nati Marie Saenz was writing from Elsa, Texas to tell Riley how she valued the Bible the kind woman gave her for her seventh birthday, the day her family moved from Abbeville to Texas in 1987. It wasn’t until Riley’s family called her after receiving the letter that the girl, now 17, learned her older friend had been murdered in her home on May 21, 1990.
But the letter, which expressed the inspiration the girl has drawn from the Bible and the woman who gave it to her, made a positive impact on Riley’s family during the holiday season.
“I had been going through a depressed time,” said Pat Jones, Riley’s daughter who found her mother’s body early that Tuesday morning in the spring of 1990.
“But when I got that letter, it was the most uplifting thing to think that Mother had meant that much to her. That’s what Christmas is all about, what celebrating Christ is all about. Reading that letter made me feel really close to Mother.”
Saenz, who hopes to visit Riley’s family sometime in 1999, wanted to tell Riley her Bible helped get her through her own trials, such as the period when she suffered brain seizures after undergoing surgery for a tumor in 1995.
Fortunately, she is now seizure-free and is quite active in her church, where she teaches Bible classes for eighth-grade and first-grade children.
“I want you to know that I treasure that Bible with all my heart,” Saenz wrote Riley in the letter. “I’m sorry for not writing to you for all these years, but I want you to know that I have never forgotten you, and never will . . .
“I always remember you, not only for your kindness, but also for your friendship . . . I’m 17-years-old and a junior in high school, and I’m living a great life because I have the Lord and those wonderful memories of you in my life. I hope you get to read this letter and know how much I admired you and appreciated your kindness.”
Although she had lost contact with Riley in the decade since her family moved west, Saenz said a TV movie aired during Christmas motivated her to write. Then, on the day after Christmas and Riley’s birthday, she received the letter from Jones’ brother Wayne that included the sad news.
“I thought of her like my grandmother, and I was very excited when I got the letter,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in south Texas. “My family thought I was joking when I was reading it to them out loud. We were all shocked, and I couldn’t believe what I was reading.”
Jones was surprised to hear Saenz’s career goals. Since Riley’s murder, Jones has become active in Victims of Crime and Leniency (She serves as president of the Southeast Alabama VOCAL chapter.) as the family has suffered through the prosecution of the two men who killed her mother.
Willie McNair, the Abbeville man who had done lawn work for Riley before the murder, confessed of the crime and was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death, and is now at Atmore Correctional Facility.
The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the sentence, and a Montgomery County jury sentenced McNair to life without parole, but Circuit Judge Edward Jackson overruled the decision and reinstated the death penalty.
Seven of McNair’s 10 death penalty appeals have been exhausted.
The other man implicated in the murder, Olin Grimsley, was only convicted of robbery charges and sentenced to life, which he is serving at Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery.
Of course, Saenz knew none of this when she began considering a career in criminal justice. She plans to begin pursuing her degree at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio after high school graduation in 2000.
Although hearing of her friend’s death has provided more inspiration for a career in criminal prosecution, Saenz said her mind has been set in this direction for most of her life.
“Since I was a little girl, that’s all I wanted to be,” Saenz said.