Herb Benham: No country for scared men

May 10—Arkansas Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo. That caught my attention.

The name seemed like a war of opposites. Somewhat mutually exclusive. "Alligators" and "petting" don't normally go together except in your nightmares.

This was neither dream nor nightmare but a thriving business in Hot Springs, Ark., up the street from the cottage where we were staying. During our visit, I did the requisite Hot Springs things: I hiked in Hot Springs National Park and took a dip in the Quapaw Mineral Baths, but nothing was going to cure my curiosity about alligators and petting so for $9 ($5 extra if you wanted to feed them), I aimed to find out.

***

Petting and feeding alligators assumes a level of comfort and familiarity that most laymen or women might not enjoy.

However, owner Jamie Bridges, 63 and athletically bald, is no layman. If he'd said he'd made his living wrestling alligators rather than coaching high school basketball and tennis before he retired at 58, few would have argued. Bridges is fit and muscular and if I had been an alligator, I might have jumped back in the river and swam to the other side had I seen him long-striding toward me.

Bridges is serious about alligators and the business, which may be closer to a calling, which he speaks of with reverence. The business has been there since 1904,\; his grandparents bought it in 1947, his parents took it over in 1965 and he and Suzy, his wife of 38 years, a dental hygienist, have been running since 2016.

"You have to be willing to do the work in the back," Bridges said, gesturing to the eight acres through the back door that presumably held the alligator petting zoo along with some other surprises.

"I get here an hour and a half early so we can get it smelling good because we have 128 alligators, 15 goats, 12 sheep, two donkeys, two emus, one rhea, a bunch of parakeets, a flock of Silkie chickens, a couple of timberwolves, several monkeys and lemurs, a mountain lion, rabbits and tortoises."

Impressive collection, but I wondered privately if the parakeets, Silkie chickens and rabbits were a side show meant for the faint of heart and the patrons who might have an aversion to alligators. I would have bet $9 that most of the guests were not there to see a bunny unless it inadvertently hopped into the alligator pen.

Bridges gave me the lowdown as I stood by the cash register: He's never paid for an alligator in his life. They come from Louisiana, Texas or Arkansas and from the Fish & Game or people who bought them when they were small and cute and woke up one day and realized their alligator was neither small nor cute.

"They don't have babies here because they mate vertically and need at least 5 feet of water," Bridges said.

While I was trying to get that image out of my mind, a bearded husband and his wife in their late 30s walked in with their two children, a boy and girl under 10.

They seemed tentative, as if they were wondering whether this was a good idea, and somewhat on the glum side as if they had been badgered by their kids into stopping.

I wondered how many parents brought in their tired or misbehaving children and thought, "I'll buy a couple of tickets but why pay the extra $5 to feed them?"

Behind me was a TV mounted on the wall playing what I thought was an educational alligator video from National Geographic. I was wrong.

It was a video of Bridges feeding the alligators at the petting zoo in front of a large crowd. Distracted by a young boy who yelled "chicken," Bridges looked away to pick up a piece of chicken only to have a 200-pound alligator, (now known as "Yella" because of his color rather than his lack of nerve) latch onto his arm.

"I lifted the alligator off the ground because I had to keep him from going into a death roll," Bridges said. "Once they start spinning, they can get you on the ground. Had he done that, the others might have jumped on me. Fortunately my arm wasn't that deep in his mouth."

Not "deep" but deep enough to go to the hospital and get 36 stitches. "Deep" enough to run out of there but not "deep" enough to scream and "freak people out" because the show had to go on.

"I was operating on adrenaline and, as I ran through the gift shop, I said 'I'll be right back.'"

A couple of months later, Bridges received a video in the mail from a guy who had filmed it. The video was free but the lucky guest sold a copy to Animal Planet for a thousand bucks.

***

We kept talking but sooner or later I was going to have to walk the plank and do what my $9 entitled me to do.

Turns out the pettable alligators are about 2 feet long and their jaws are clamped together by a bunch of rubber bands. As I was holding the alligator that was very much alive, I wondered about the integrity of the rubber bands. What if all the rubber bands snapped at once? I keep rubber bands on my desk wrapped around a small wooden duck and they were always drying up and breaking. Do rubber bands like Arkansas humidity because if they didn't and this alligator freed his jaw with one mighty effort, Bridges could include a flying alligator on the marquis.

I handed the alligator back to Cat, a young woman who had worked there for five years.

"I wanted this job so bad, I came here nine or 10 times to get it," Cat said, taking back my alligator as if it were a loaf of bread.

I walked by the pens with a bunch of alligators lying all over each other. On this cool spring day, they looked relaxed and almost incapable of movement, but when it warms up or it was feeding day, Bridges assured me they could move just fine.

On my way out, I asked about Bridges about his wife.

"We had a 2-foot gator get out one night," he said. "We got a call from police that an alligator was out front of the farm. When we got up there, two police cars had their lights on this little gator. My wife walks up there grabs the alligator and picks it up and when she swung it around, it nipped her hand and she was bleeding."

"The policeman said that's why you don't mess with alligator. My wife said, 'I'm not hurt. A 2-foot gator is not big.'"

Not to Suzy nor her husband but for most of us, 2 feet is plenty big enough.

Herb Benham is a columnist for The Bakersfield Californian and can be reached at hbenham@bakersfield.com or 661-395-7279.