Toots' encounter with an alligator in Moline

[giester2]

Toots tells the story much better than I ever can but I will try.

The way I heard the story was.....

It was either 1962 or 1963 and Grandma Toots was getting ready for the start of the new school year.  She was walking across Plumb st on her way to the school, when something crawled out of the culvert.  It scared her at first and she gave a little shout.  Well the shout made this thing turn towards her, and upon turning it started to hiss at her.  She had no clue what it was.  The thing then turned and tried to get back into the culvert, but Toots didn't let it.  She says that she knew she would have to walk that same route everyday and that she would be too scared to walk it knowing that the thing could come out to get her at any time. So she started hollering and doing a little stomping dance in circle around it to keep it in the street. (Now when she told us this story in 2002, this little 90 year old lady got up and started to demonstrate the little stomp she did and corrected us when we did it wrong). She continued her little dance until a neighbor came to save her (Ira Thomas?).  It was then identified as an alligator.

The alligator was actually only about 2 ft long, Toots was convinced it was much bigger, and no one really knows what happened to it.

Rumor has it that the gator was either purchased on a senior skip trip or on a summer excursion by some high school kids and that it had escaped from whomever was keeping it.

[jpbill]

I had never heard the story of Mary Giesy coming in contact with an alligator.  I graduated from Moline High School in1961 and on the senior trip to Lake of the Ozarks, 3 of us boys, pooled our money and bought a live alligator.  We each were taking turns caring for the beast (appox. 18" long) that summer.  The alligator escaped later that summer and we never knew of its final fate.

[archeobabe]

Today, you can't own an alligator.  It is against the law.  I don't think the Sedgwick county zoo has any alligators on exhibit.  But I remember seeing the alligators that were located in Riverside park.  It was a big deal when the alligators were moved into their winter quarters.  It was on the news.