Those ain’t doggies

MOSCA, Colo.

You have tamed your IPod, mastered your IPhone, conquered the art of downloading and text messaging and tied the Hong Kong stock market to your laptop in Chattanooga, Tenn.

But do you know how to wrestle an alligator, if one by any chance shows up at your doorstep? Believe it or not, this manly skill, unceremoniously eclipsed by the digital age, is still being taught in southern Colorado.

It snows here in the winter and temperatures routinely drop below the freezing point. Majestic peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rise to the east of a semiarid valley of sage and parched grass that offers a more hospitable home to prairie dogs and rattlesnakes than to the bulky denizens of swamps around the Gulf of Mexico.

But here they are — more than 400 of them, loitering carelessly in a string of fenced ponds at more than 7,500 feet above sea level, just 17 miles north of the railway town of Alamosa. Eating, drinking and multiplying.

“All of these ponds are fed by a geothermal well that provides 87-degree water year-round,” explains Jay Young, co-owner of Colorado Gators Alligator Farm & Reptile Park and chief instructor at the wrestling school. “We are proud to say that they are more comfortable here than in Florida, regardless of the weather outside.”

Food is plentiful as well. The alligators live next to a fish farm, feasting on tilapia that did not make it to market.

They even have a Hollywood celebrity among them, a no-nonsense 50-year-old 12-footer named Morris, who starred in “Happy Gilmore” and “Dr. Doolittle 2” among other pictures before retiring to the fresh mountain air.

But why the school?

“Why do people jump with parachutes or leap off a cliff with just a bungee cord wrapped around their feet?” Mr. Young says. “It’s a way to prove yourself, to test your composure in extraordinary situations, to get a rush of adrenaline.”

The three-hour course costs $100 and is available to adults upon signing a release form.

The introductory phase consists of catching a sprightly 2½-foot caiman careening across a pool with the speed of a toy motor boat.

It probably lacks the heft to kill a human outright, but certainly has a wide enough mouth — and razor-sharp teeth — to snap off a finger, if given the chance.

“No matter the size, you always start from the tail,” patiently explains Mr. Young, wearing a battered “Crocodile Dundee”-style hat. “As you may have noticed, that’s where they don’t have teeth.”

From then on, it’s really a three-step strategy: a pull, a lunge and a lift.

Story Continues →