Pack of Dog Kills Gator

South Florida real estate tycoon wrestles alligator in Everglades -- and loses

By Buddy Nevins
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted May 4 2006


Real estate tycoon Ronald Bergeron, who developed much of the former Everglades in southwest Broward County, was bitten on the hand while trying to wrestle with one of the Everglades fiercest denizens -- an American alligator.

Bergeron said he was giving an all-terrain vehicle tour of his 5,000-plus-acre private nature preserve in Hendry County on Sunday morning to guests who had donated $10,000 to the Boys and Girls Club for the weekend.

Coming across an alligator he estimated at 7 feet long resting on the lakeside, Bergeron, who has wrestled many alligators in the past, jumped on the reptile.

"Couples donate a lot of money to charities for the weekend and I always tell them I'm going to wrestle an alligator," Bergeron said Wednesday. "It's part of my Florida cracker culture. My grandfather was a game warden in the Everglades and I grew up around alligators."

Bergeron said he usually rides on the alligator's back for a minute and lets it go. He said he never harms the alligators.

But this time, the stunt turned ugly.

"I saw Ronnie jump on its back and suddenly he was dragged under water," said Aleida "Ali" Waldman, Bergeron's real estate attorney.

She said the guests stood stunned on the shore.

"He was rolling and I couldn't keep control of his mouth," Bergeron said. "He grabbed my hand in his mouth."

"When Ronnie came up for air, he was screaming," Waldman said.

When the alligator got near shore, Waldman and Bergeron yelled for car dealer Rick Case and others to grab the reptile's tail and pull it out of the water.

Bergeron, who let the gator go when he got on shore, was driven to Cleveland Clinic in Weston. His left pinky finger was shattered, his ring finger was broken and there were puncture wounds through his palm in several places.

Dani Moschella, a spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said, "It's illegal to harass an animal in any way. Alligators are a species of special concern."

Moschella said the incident had not been reported to her agency Wednesday.

This isn't the first time Bergeron, who lives in Weston, has been injured while taking part in extreme sports. He snapped off part of his right middle finger while trying to rope a steer in the rodeo, where he competes almost every week.

Isn't the 62-year-old multimillionaire getting too old to fool with alligators, he was asked.

"I don't think so," he said. "I work out every day. I participate in the professional rodeo every week. I might just do it again."

Send those puppies on down to Fort Lauderdale - weve been having some big ass gator problems lately. Besides they're SO darn cute!

This story has a liberal bias. I hate it.

The most powerful American Indian leader of the past century is a manual laborer building palmetto-thatched chickees in the unforgiving heat and thunderstorms of South Florida.

You might spot Chief Jim Billie anywhere from Naples to Dania today—a short, stocky man of 60, sweating through a colorful patchwork shirt and barking commands to a ragtag group of workmen.

Billie learned that tourists would pay good money to watch a young boy wrestle an alligator or bare the fangs of a rattlesnake. His flamboyant manner made the young Billie a local tourist legend. “It was P.T. Barnum, that’s all,” he says now. “All them boys could catch ’gators. I just added a flair to it.”

In February, Seminole Chief James Billie lost a finger wrestling a gator in front of about 100 tourists. Perhaps the chief was a bit rusty -- it had been a decade since he'd tussled with one of the beady-eyed brutes.

Billie called back and ordered the reptile be fed a whole fresh chicken and saved from destruction. (His only other incident, among thousands of exhibitions, was a 1983 bite on his buttocks suffered while giving a private show to actress Connie Stevens.)