Death by Alligator

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Annmarie Campbell lived in Tennessee, but she grew up in central Florida, and she had vacationed before in the rustic two-bedroom cabin on a creek in Florida's Ocala National Forest. Two weeks ago, she was there again with a few members of her extended family. That Sunday the aspiring artist, 23, slipped into the water to snorkel her way back to the cabin. A few minutes later, her former stepfather's wife Jackie Barrett left the sandbar where they had been sunning themselves and followed Campbell. The young woman was nowhere to be found. Barrett grabbed a kayak and paddled downstream in search of her. No luck. So Barrett headed back toward the cabin--to find her husband Mark and a family friend frantically gouging at the eyes of an 11 1/2-ft. alligator and prying at its jaws, firmly clamped on Campbell's upper body. By the time the creature finally let go, it was too late. Campbell was dead, with massive head trauma and lungs filled with water.

The incident would have been shocking by itself. But it was not the only one. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission records an average of about seven alligator attacks every year, yet they are rarely fatal: since 1948, only 17 humans had been confirmed killed by the huge reptiles. But in the five days leading up to Campbell's death, two other women had been partly eaten by alligators. Three deadly assaults in the space of a week seemed like too much of a coincidence. Floridians, who tend to be casual about their state reptile, were suddenly hypervigilant to a danger that seemed to be lurking in every body of freshwater bigger than a bathtub. Calls to hotlines skyrocketed, and all over the state people were asking themselves what could possibly be going on.

The circumstances of each death offered no obvious clues. They happened in different parts of the state: Yovy Suarez Jimenez, 28, was killed in Sunrise, just north of Miami, and Judy Cooper, 43, was found 20 miles north of St. Petersburg. Although nobody witnessed either attack, authorities believe that Jimenez was sitting at the edge of a canal, dangling her feet in the water, when she was seized by an alligator and dragged in. And there is no reason to believe that Cooper was swimming.

In short, the unusual spate of fatal attacks may have been a ghastly coincidence--but that doesn't mean they were entirely random. According to wildlife experts, several factors may have recently upped the odds of alligator aggression. For one thing, this is the time of year when the reptiles emerge from cold-weather quiescence and enter the mating season. That makes them more territorial and more aggressive than normal. Beyond that, the state has been experiencing an extended drought over the past several years, shrinking the animals' natural habitat and forcing them to forage in areas where humans have created ponds, canals and swimming pools.

There are also more alligators around today than ever because of the reptile's 20-year stint on the federal endangered-species list. Back in 1967, when it was formally listed, trapping for meat and hides had reduced the alligator population in Florida to no more than 300,000. Now there are 1 million to 2 million. At the same time, the state's human population has exploded. As a result, development is pushing into wetlands that were once pure, alligator-friendly wilderness, and agriculture is draining huge swaths of alligator habitat. Everglades National Park is just one-seventh the size of the historic Everglades swampland, forcing the animals to share territory that humans consider their own.

It's a familiar story. In the American West, mountain lions are getting squeezed, and lethal attacks by the big cats have become more frequent. In the Northeast, it is black bears, foraging in suburban backyards. In Florida, it's alligators. And unlike cougars and bears, which are rarely spotted, alligators are everywhere and are almost always docile. Along a path just inside Everglades park's Shark Valley entrance, for example, alligators loll along the bank of the adjacent canal, as uninterested in the people as they are in the bugs that swirl overhead. Yet park employees have seen tourists run over alligators with bikes and wheelchairs, throw rocks at them and stab them with sticks. People even put kids on the backs of the creatures for a gator photo op. "The alligator isn't the problem. It's humans," says park naturalist Maria Thomson. "We're pushing them to the limit."

And every so often, they push back. Whenever an alligator kills a human, the state sends out trappers to catch and kill it. The animals responsible for the three recent attacks have all been trapped. Parts of Jimenez were found in the belly of a 9 1/2-ft. alligator, Cooper's arm and hand were recovered from an 8 1/2-footer, and Campbell's killer was identified by scratches around its eye. But it's not as if those particular alligators were more dangerous than most, and destroying them won't prevent future attacks. Officials say the best ways to avoid becoming dinner for an alligator are not to feed the animals, which can lead them to lose their natural wariness; to stay away from the water's edge at dusk and dawn, when the creatures tend to hunt; and to be generally wary in and around the water. "A little gator common sense," says state-certified trapper Todd Hardwick, "takes you a long way."

Even so, people are still going to run afoul of alligators. And while three deaths in a week establish a benchmark of horror that probably won't be repeated soon, encounters between alligators and people are bound to increase. "We're putting our lives on the line," says Hardwick, "so you can have a safe backyard."

With reporting by Kathie Klarreich/Everglades National Park