7.5-foot-long alligator makes statement about garbage at Port Royal’s famed wetlands

Standing on four beefy legs made of hefty shrimp boat anchor chain, a 7 1/2-foot-long and 2 1/2-foot-wide alligator sculpture weighing 125 pounds and made mostly of metal now greets visitors to Port Royal’s Cypress Wetlands.

With its large tail that’s slightly curved, the toothy and bumpy backed replica is poised near the entrance to the swamp where real alligators live, literally greeting visitors with a steely stare and a grin revealing a mouthful of teeth fashioned from bicycle chain.

But the new greeter is not art for art’s sake alone.

It’s a statement, too: Don’t be a slob and toss litter into the waters of the world-class wetlands and rookery.

To drive home the point of the harm that garbage can have on wildlife, the innards of the alligator sculpture are stuffed with metal cans and plastic bottles.

“Litter endangers our alligators, turtles, birds and our entire ecosystem,” a sign near the garbage gator reads.

Metal artist Cathy Pender Emmert created this unique sculpture.

“It’s definitely a piece of art,” Pender Emmert said moments before the town’s latest piece of artwork, hidden under a green tarp, was unveiled before a curious crowd that gathered at the amphitheater on Thursday. “I really like it. It surpassed my expectations of what I thought I would create.”

The metal artist spared no details trying to get the gator just right, studying information about the specifics of the apex predator’s toes and eyes. Sharing a fun fact she learned in her investigation, the length in inches between an alligator’s nostrils and eyes is approximately the same as the animal’s total length in feet.

She made the sculpture using mostly metal chains of various sizes and some rebar.

The eyes are made of steel orbs with a slash of copper to mimic the slits. The rebar was chosen because it’s rough, like an alligator’s texture, while the chains recreate its bumpy and bony exterior.

Friends of Cypress Wetlands asked Pender Emmert to create the public art.

The not-for-profit group advocates on behalf of the wetlands, which attracts thousands of great egrets, snowy egrets, tri-color herons, little blue herons, black-crowned night herons, green herons and white ibises that roost and nest in the trees.

Scot Clark, the president of the board, says Cypress Wetlands draws some 210,000 visitors a year, which is “pretty amazing.”

But Kat Bray, a Friends board member, also noted that she and others have been pulling trash out of the swamp for years.

She recommended a public service-type of public art after she saw a large dolphin sculpture filled with litter while visiting St. Simons Island.

“We wanted to make a statement,” Bray said.

A welder by trade, Pender Emmert manages the welding department at Pender Brothers Inc. in Port Royal. About 6 years ago, she started creating art from metal. The beer tap handles at Shellring Ale Works are just one of her projects.

After hours, Pender Emmert and her father enjoy father-daughter time doing “blacksmithing” projects.

“I tell everybody, ‘He didn’t have a boy, so I had to man up,’” she says with a laugh.

The alligator sculpture project contained a lot of firsts for her: It is the first animal she has created and her first three-dimensional project. It is also the largest.

At the close of the unveiling of the sculpture, somebody asked about the name of the alligator. Clark says that’s still to be determined, but Pender Emmert’s father has an idea.

“I’ve been referring to it as ‘him,’” she said of alligator sculpture, ”but my dad says it should be Ally the Gator.”