Men charged in alligator barbecue

By JENNIFER BABSON excerpt from Miami Herald

KEY WEST - Two Keys men face criminal charges after wildlife officials say they killed and butchered a protected American Alligator last month -- serving her up at a backyard barbecue a few days later.

The two men, Timothy B. Goll, 18, of Marathon, and Jordan T. Milo, 20, of Big Pine Key, have been charged with killing the animal, a third degree felony.

State and federal wildlife investigators say two other people -- both high school students, one a minor -- are also believed to be involved in the March 24 incident. They have not yet been charged.
The men are alleged to have shot the female adult gator and then beaten her death.

"They apparently used a pellet gun to disable it and then used a baseball bat to kill it," said Lt. Steve Acton, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which is investigating the incident along with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

The animal's unwanted body parts were discarded in area canals and later recovered. The gator lived in a freshwater pond on Big Pine Key. The incident is among several crocodile and alligator killings that have occurred in the Keys recently.

Five Dade County men were charged in a December incident in the Upper Keys in which an American crocodile was captured, dragged behind a vehicle, and killed.

Early last month, two endangered American crocodiles were found dead -- apparently from gunshot wounds -- in the Lower Keys. Their carcasses were dumped along remote areas off U.S. 1.

Texas Yellow Mud Turtle

This is my Texas Yellow Mud Turtle. It is about four inches long. It is a pretty neat little turtle. I have it in the ten gallon tank which has tropical fish also. The small mud turtles do not seem to be very fast when it comes to hunting fish, so the tropical fish seem to mostly survive in the tank. I have a variety of fish. Glass shrimp, neons, mollies, guppies, zebra danios, a red-tail barb, and I had a catfish but it looks like it was eaten by the turtles.

The Texas Mud Turtle has a sort of mustard color. It is named a Yellow Mud Turtle because the skin on its neck is sort of yellowish. It is different from the standard Mud Turtles that I have gotten in the past.

It also seems to be more shy and thoughtful. That may sound silly, but this turtle will look around and turn her head at things. The little turtle seems to be thinking about what to do. Too bad turtles can't talk, it would be interesting to hear what it is thinking about.

She has a very short tail, so she is a female turtle. My child has named all the turtles but I don't remember this one's name. This little turtle also seems to enjoy looking at its own reflection in the glass of the aquarium. When I see the turtle doing that, it reminds me of that song by Siouxie and the Banshees (Through the Looking Glass). The larger turtles in the other aquarium are used to looking through the glass. They can see me when I walk by, and they start sticking their heads out of the water and paddling when they want food. I guess it must be weird to be a turtle in an aquarium looking out at people walking by.

Musk Turtle is growing

The Musk turtle is getting bigger. Now that this one and the Texas Mud turtle are in their own tank, I think they will do better. The larger turtles in the other tank have a tendency to nip at the smaller turtles.

I found Dusty, the Ball Python!

After four months missing in action, today I found Dusty! We were all overjoyed to see that the baby snake was back! I was shocked to find it, and also very happy. There I was playing ball with my dog Brownie, when the rubber Hi-Bounce ball bounced over a book shelf and then rolled down the back of the shelf and got stuck between the book-shelf and the wall. These Super-Balls are about two inches in diameter, and Brownie loves running after them because they bounce around so much. When the ball bounced behind the book shelf, Brownie kept wagging her tail at the book shelf and whining.

I did not have a spare ball around, so I moved the book shelf to get the ball. When I moved the book shelf a little, the ball rolled all the way down the wall and under the book shelf. So I had to move the book shelf completely away from the wall in order to get the ball. As I pushed the book shelf about a foot away from the wall, I saw the balled up snake rolling on the floor! Apparently it had gone into hibernation, and I had awakened it? What is funny is that my dog Brownie has often sniffed at the bottom of that book shelf. Since I have lost a few of those Hi-Bounce balls when they have bounced behind various furniture (because I am not going to move the furniture to find a little rubber ball), I had always thought that Brownie was sniffing at some lost ball.

On the floor area that where the snake had been was the old waste of the last mouse it had eaten back in December, and a sloughed-off skin. It took a few minutes to clean tht up, as the stuff had all dried into the floor (fortunately it is not a rug!). Apparently Dusty had moulted once at some point. The snake had a tiny bit of skin that seemed to have been rubbed off, possibly when I moved the shelf. You can see the abrasion in this photo (about two inches on the ridge of its spine, near the right-hand corner of the photo) of Dusty that I took when I put it into its home. It stayed in the water dish for a while. It was too late to go to the pet store and buy a mouse. Hopefully Dusty will be hungry!