A Florida school-bus driver is off the road for a while after letting some kids play "Crocodile Hunter" for real.
Sherry Hattaway was taking students from Pasco Middle and High Schools in Lacoochee, Fla., home last Thursday afternoon when a four-foot alligator crossed the road and went into a field, reports the St. Petersburg Times.
"Can we catch it? Can we catch it?" asked some of the 11 kids on board, according to Jimmie Scroggins, father of two riders.
Hattaway first said no, then changed her mind and pulled over.
Four boys ran off the bus, hopped a fence, chased the alligator into a mud hole, got it to clamp its teeth around a stick and wrapped its head with their shirts. A fifth boy happened to have a roll of electrical tape handy, which took care of keeping the reptile's jaws shut.
"It was the first thing that came into my head," said 14-year-old Jacob Scroggins when asked why he wanted to catch the gator.
After a 15-minute struggle, the boys triumphantly got back on the bus with their squirming, angry prize.
Hattaway drove on to the Scroggins residence, where the gator chasers and their quarry disembarked.
Jimmy Scroggins soon came home from his welding job to find several boys, including his sons Jacob and Jared, clustered around the bed of his Ford F-250 (search) pickup.
"They were all, 'Look what I got!'" Scroggins recalled.
Scroggins didn't think it was so funny. He took the gator out to the nearby Withlacoochee River (search) and let it go.
"Kids are going to do what kids are going to do," he said. "But there was a consenting adult involved."
Hattaway, 41, has been placed on paid leave. She has a perfect driving record and has gotten high marks for dealing with kids during her five years at the wheel of the school bus.
"If the facts I'm hearing are true, then at the least she used some of the worst judgment someone could use in endangering kids," said Pasco schools superintendent John Long.
Lacoochee is about 40 miles northeast of Tampa.
Hattaway refused to take calls from reporters Monday and Tuesday.
The Scroggins brothers told the St. Petersburg Times they felt bad for Hattaway and were worried she might lose her job.
"I liked her a lot," said Wilfredo Santiago, another boy on the bus. "She was cool."
His mother, Aurora Moreno Santiago, had her own comment: "I guess she was too cool."
"” Thanks to Out There reader Leon F.
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A 4 foot gator aint nothing. Hell I was catchin 6' rattlesnakes when I was a kid, swimming flooded rivers, walking 20 miles through the woods to school and back again ... I hand caught wild russian boars for fun, cut tie bolts in the hot summer and wood in the winter for spare cash, chewed, smoked, drank, played in bars and did it all bare footed with a toothpick in my mouth and a hawk feather in my straw hat and when I turned 14 my Dad said time to be a real man and quit playing around.
Ya'll are just a bunch of pansie wussies ..... 4' gator over the line - BLAH !! I'd be ashamed if my kids COULDN'T catch a 4' gator.
why dont we just start field trips for grade schoolers to a gator farm. We'll give em a rope and really sharp stick put em in a pit with some 10fters and let em loose. Whoever catches the most , less the body parts wins a trip to Disney World . We could even put it on pay per view.
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Take the "Training Wheels" off your bow. Go traditional !
Go Ahead, Kids, Chase the Alligator
