Texas Fauna Project

American Alligator

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Glynn Riley, a veteran trapper, served for decades with the Texas Rodent and Predatory Animal Control Service, a collaboration between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Texas Animal Damage Control Association. In that career, he worked on managing populations of animals ranging from rats to coyotes. Here he talks about one job where he tangled with an alligator near Liberty, Texas. We are grateful to Diana Dwyer and the USDA/APHIS Wildlife Services Program, and its Trapping Oral History Initiative, for kindly sharing the source recordings for this excerpt.