Well folks as many of
you have heard, I am about to start a new chapter in my life.
I’ve been driving airboats off the Tamiami Trail (US-41)
just west of Miami, for 14 years. As a tour guide I visit many
other airboat attractions and have my own rating system. Who
better to do the rating than an experienced airboat tour guide
with many years in the business, right?
Many years ago my
friend Ray Bacerra (a falconer) worked with me, but ended up
taking a job at Billie Swamp Safari. http://www.seminoletribe.com/safari/ I
started going up to Billie’s to visit with Ray right away.
Even back then, Billie Swamp Safari was a nice place. I liked it
there so much, I wrote a story about my many visits there.
**If you’re not
already reading this on my Airboats and Animals of Florida
website, you can go on-line to www.aaof.us then find
“Stories of an Airboat Guide.” To read the story,
you’ll have to click where it says “check out my past
stories.” You’ll find that I wrote, “A
tour guide’s view of other eco-tours” back in 2000 and
it’s very much about Billie’s.
I recently took a
vacation, spending 5 days and 4 nights at Billie Swamp Safari. That’s
right, I live and work in the everglades and what do I do? Yeah,
I take a vacation in the everglades. Everyone laughs about
that, but I really do love the everglades. It was so cool,
I went to check in and could see Donald Starks at the reception
desk and the first words out of his mouth were “Hey,
Gatorman when is your start date?” I told him I was
there for vacation and not to fill out an application... yet. We
both chuckled and Mrs. Gatorman and I checked in and were
directed to our chickee (a traditional Seminole and Miccosukee
lodging with a roof of palm fronds). The coolest thing about
Billie Swamp Safari is you can check in and spend your whole
vacation right there. As we walked through the park we
passed the swamp buggy dock and I looked up to see Cathy
Mickelsen looking down at me. Cathy yelled “Hey Gatorman
when do you start?” I laughed and continued towards our
chickee. As we got closer, Jodi Simone went by on a golf cart and
yelled “Hey, when do you start?” I laughed and waved to
Jodi. Cathy and Jodi are swamp buggy tour guides. It is
said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but both
have taught me a few new ways of doing things.
For the next four days,
everyone that I’d met and known at Billie Swamp Safari over
the last decade or so came up to me and said, “Hey Gatorman
are you coming to work here?” or, “Hey Gatorman, when
do you start?” The thing was, I really was just on
vacation. An old and forgotten idea started working its way
out of the dark and damp, cobweb filled basement of my mind,
however, and started seeking daylight.
I must say I was
honored to know that so many people wanted me to work with them.
These are all friendly folks who love their jobs and are as
passionate about the everglades as I am. In the last
10 years, many of my friends who are employees of Billie Swamp
Safari have asked me if I would ever come work with them. I have
always looked up to all of them, and considered their work to be
on par with my own. Go on a national park tour sometime,
really, they are educational and some are quite good, but when
the national park guides talk, they are usually monotone,
sounding like Ben Stein. Also, watch the national park
guides when they use a catch phrase such as “Look at the
beauty around you.” Not only don’t they sound
passionate about what they are talking about, but they are
looking at the audience when they say that rather than looking
around, themselves. It’s sad. You can tell when
someone is passionate about their work and about the everglades,
because their excitement shows and you can hear it in their
voices. That describes everyone at Billie Swamp Safari.
It was hard to say
good-bye to the “river of grass,” the southeastern part
of the everglades, where I have lived and worked as an airboat
tour guide for 17 years. Billie Swamp Safari is a bit further
north and west off of Alligator Alley, which crosses the state
from Broward County to Collier County just as the Tamiami Trail
crosses the state down in Miami-Dade County, and is tucked in
among the old growth cypress swamp that is the northwest end of
the everglades. The area is the same now as it has been for
hundreds if not thousands of years and you might find rare
orchids and other plants that you will not see anywhere else.
When you see a big alligator in this setting it is easy to
imagine that you really are spying on the private moments of a
dinosaur.
So, you may be asking
yourself, “what was it that finally made Gatorman decide to
make such a drastic change?” I love to take folks out
on an airboat and teach them about the everglades, but there
was something missing. At the tourist park where I worked
for the last 14 years, I drove an airboat, and early on, started
wrestling alligators which I found to be very gratifying.
I have, as you all
know, a great love for wild alligators. I only started
wrestling alligators in the early 1990’s because a new guy
started working at the park who had been wrestling alligators for
2 or 3 years before he came to work there. This guy would boast
about how much cooler he was than the rest of us, because he
could wrestle an alligator. Just for the record, I hold a high
respect for anyone who will jump on an alligator, assuming they
are properly trained in how to do it. Well, the boasting of
the alligator wrestler sounded like a challenge to me and my
friend, Kubas Vanroyan, so, we started practicing alligator
wrestling ourselves with one of my many friends, Jose Novo at
Everglades Safari Park. On days when there was no one to wrestle
the alligators, Kubas or I would jump in the pit and put on
a show. Kubas wrestled the alligators now and then just to
prove he could do it and I started wrestling more and more often,
because I liked it. Soon, I was told that I could “NOT”
wrestle alligators there anymore. I was so disappointed
that I went out and bought my own alligator so I could practice
and stay in shape. I was just driving airboats and missing the
alligator wrestling.
While on my vacation,
my friend Gus “One Bear” Batista at Billie Swamp Safari
kept asking me to come work with him and the Billie Swamp Safari
crew. He told me that if I went to work at Billie’s I
would continue to drive airboats and I could also drive swamp
buggies. As much fun as they are to ride, swamp buggies are
even more fun to drive. Wow, I thought, I could get paid to
do that. My brain was still in vacation mode, so the idea
of working at Billie Swamp Safari was filed for later
consideration while I pondered more important things, such as,
what to have for dessert. However, the idea wasn’t
filed as deeply as it might have been, and my mind kept bouncing
the idea of working at Billie Swamp Safari off the front of my
skull the way Steve McQueen bounced that baseball off the cell
wall in “The Great Escape.” Then Gus said, “You
can wrestle gators every now and then too.” I
heard bells. I felt like I’d just won the big bucks at
one of the slot machines back at the Seminole Indian Tribe of
Florida’s Hard Rock Casino.
http://www.seminolehardrock.com/
I know a lot of
alligator wrestlers, but there are two that I have the most
respect for. These men not only see the alligator they are
working with, but it seems they can feel what the alligator is
about to do. # 1 would be Jose Novo and # 1
would be Gus “One Bear” Batista (Uh huh, both are # 1).
Gus has amazed me with his alligator handling skills. When
Gus is in the alligator pit, sitting in the water, working the
alligators, I watch in AWE.
It’s not often
that I cringe when I watch someone working with alligators, but
Gus often makes me wonder, “how does he do that?”
As my new Boss made
clear to me, I am “not the spring chicken I used to
be,” so I will be back up to Gus and to John Martinez in the
alligator pit.
Since Gus and I love to
interact with wild alligators, the chance to be his back up in
the pit was just fine with me. It is nice to have a boss
that worries about you. Then I got to meet the manager at Billie
Swamp Safari. “Call me Ed,” he said. Ed
told me that I could also perform venomous snake shows. All I can
say is, thanks Ed. I have always looked up to Hans Lago,
who along with Gus and myself, has a great love for reptiles.
As a matter of fact, Hans is like a walking encyclopedia of
reptiles. In the short time I have known him, Hans has
taught me many intricate things about reptiles and I was looking
forward to teaching as much as I can about them to the public.
Because, when I give a show, I am teaching as well as
entertaining and that is part of why I love it so much. Ed
also said I could get in on story telling. Do you think I
needed any more incentive? I started thinking, “wow,
this could be the icing on the cake.” Just when I
thought it couldn’t get any better, my best friend Ray
Bacerra asked me if I would practice and maybe perform the birds
of prey shows for him. I have worked with Ray for years and he
has already taught me much about birds of prey over the many
years we have known each other. So, I get to drive airboats
and swamp buggies, wrestle alligators, show folks about snakes
and birds of prey. Well, with all that in front of me, I
just had to say yes and I took the job.
So folks, I’ve
left the park in the southeastern everglades behind and I’ve
begun a new chapter in my life at Billie Swamp Safari. Everyone
here has welcomed me with open arms and open hearts. I have been
here for 3 weeks and I feel that I am already a member of the
Billie Swamp Safari family. I want to say thanks for making
me a part of your family, it feels GREAT!!
Many of my readers came
to see me at the old place, “just off the trail, amidst the
river of grass” and some have already visited me here at
Billie Swamp Safari. I would be honored to see all of you
here at Billie’s where you will see that it’s still the
everglades, but it’s a very different everglades. Now
I’ll be showing you the beauty and serenity of the cypress
forest instead of the slow dance of the sawgrass. It’s truly
amazing. Please come and see all of us at Billie Swamp
Safari, including me, Gatorman, anytime.
GATORMAN (Glenn
W. Wilsey Sr.)
My stories may not be reused in any way without my permission. If you are a teacher or a student and you need my story or any part of it to help you with a class or a better grade, just e-mail me (gatorman1@aaof.us) and I will gladly give you permission to use the story. Other requests will be considered on a case by case basis.
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