Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

The fisheries service insists the regulations will reduce the harvest enough that shark populations will resurge. Some marine biologists are skeptical. Unlike most fish, sharks take years to mature, and reproduce in small numbers. It worked for 4 million centuries, but not so well in the last decade.

Gruber has watched the change. In 1986, he began studying the life cycles of 140 lemon sharks in a secluded bight near No Name Key. The next year, only 90 of the sharks remained. By 1989, all were gone.

Divers and charter captains report similar observations along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Some commercial boats have gone out of business or moved to North Carolina, where sharks migrate in concentrations along the continental shelf.

Sure, sharks have a PR problem. Bumblebees kill more humans, but sharks get the bad press. And TV is always a sucker for dockside footage of a dead Great White, rotting ferociously in the sun.

Scary or not, sharks play a critical role in keeping the seas bountiful. It's not easy to kill off a creature that's survived 400 million years, but we've found a way. The rich folk do like their soup.

Meanwhile, I'm steering clear of tourist shops, in case somebody gets the bright idea for manatee steak.

A regular at saloon, popularity killed her April 6, 1995

"El Presidente" died last week. Bullet in the head.

Those who loved her might have loved her too well.

El Presidente was an alligator who lived by the Last Chance Saloon in Florida City. She was eight feet long, half-blind, a favorite with bar patrons.

They thought she was a male, hence the nickname. Attempts at gender verification were deemed unwise.

Laura Dryer, who runs the Last Chance, says El Presidente was a fixture for 12 years. Never bothered anybody but the garfish.

Wildlife officers say she had become a threat because people came to feed her in the canal, which flanks busy U.S. 1. They feared a tourist or small child would tumble down the bank and get chomped.

Two citizen complaints were filed with the state Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission. Lawmen visited the scene.The verdict: El Presidente had to go.

"It met every criteria for a dangerous nuisance alligator," says Todd Hardwick, the man assigned to the capture. "It was 10 feet from U.S. 1, and a few feet from a bar where people were drinking."

One-eyed alligators and bleary-eyed partiers probably ought not to commingle, but through the years El Presidente and her fond admirers had no problems.

However, once branded a "nuisance," she was doomed. In gator-rich Florida, only the small ones are relocated. The large ones are harvested, because transfers are costly and often fruitless.

Recently a beloved alligator named Grandpa, in a rare clemency, was moved from Big Pine Key to Homosassa Springs. Bitten and abused by resident gators, Grandpa soon died.

So El Presidente received the customary sentence: death.

Hardwick, well-known capturer and rescuer of wild critters, holds the state trapper license for Dade and Monroe. He and two assistants got the call March 30 from Game and Fish.

Snagged with a fishing rod, El Presidente proved more manageable than her fans at the Last Chance. "They were ready to lynch me," Hardwick says.

Game officers prevented Dryer and others from blocking the capture. Mouth taped, the gator was hauled away and quickly killed with a .22. In this way, 4,632 nuisance gators were taken last year. The sale of the skin, at a state auction, is the trapper's fee.

Laura Dryer is heartsick and angry about El Presidente. "There was no justification for them to pull it out of the water and shoot it!"

Says Lt. Jeff Ardelean of Game and Fish: "They signed its death warrant by feeding it."

Indeed, El Presidente was one well-nourished saurian. At her death, she weighed 270 pounds. "Obese," says Hardwick. "The fattest eight-foot-four alligator we ever saw."

The girth of her tail was a Limbaughesque 32 inches, compared to the usual 18 or 19 inches of a gator that length.

Dryer says she didn't see throngs of people feeding El Presidente. She said the canal is teeming with fish, turtles and other natural cuisine upon which the gator gorged, though it's possible that customers donated high-calorie table scraps.

Inside the Last Chance Saloon, black armbands are worn in El Presidente's memory. Mourners don T-shirts denouncing the state: "Environmentally Protected, My Ass." There's even talk of a motorcycle run, to protest the killing.

Because of death threats, Todd Hardwick's house was put under police watch. Unaccustomed to the role of villain, he says he truly understands why people are upset.

It's easy to become attached to animals, even a crusty one-eyed alligator. Sadly, in these risky relationships, it's usually the reptile who winds up getting hurt.

Wildlife losing their homes as we build ours December 12, 1996