MUIRHEAD'S MYSTERIES: Two inland alligators in the USA

“Whilst quaffing your wine and consuming mince pies,

Look over beyond where the horizon lies,

Take your mind off that agile ice-skater,

And contemplate these two inland American alligators…”

My first story comes from the San Louis Obispo Tribune of California for December 28^th 1883.

A MOUNTAIN ALLIGATOR

William Blackheath,who has just returned from a six-months soujourn in Arizona,has brought to the Comstock the skin of what he, for want of a better name calls a Gila monster, but which is evidently that of a saurian of a different species. The skin now measures seven feet from tip to tip, and it has evidently shrunk some inches in drying. Though about the colour of an ordinary Gila monster, the reptile is more evidently a kind of inland crocodile, or more properly ,cayman, as it had not the webbed feet of the crocodile.

The strange saurian was found in a small valley in the Wheatstone Mountains.(Now known as Whetstone Mountains in Arizona-R)  When alive it stood two feet high,and its body,just back of its fore legs,was over three feet in circumference. The creature was as savage as a bull-dog, and as full of fight as a viper. It was found by the dogs of Mr Blackheath and partner. When the men arrived at the haunt of the reptile – to which they were attracted by the fierce and peculiar barking of their dogs, three in number – they found that one dog had already been killed and the others were badly cut up and covered with blood. The creature displayed such activity and was so diabolically vicious that the two prospectors feared to go near it, being armed with nothing better than a prospecting pick and a shovel with a short handle.

Finally the thing got one of the dogs by the foreleg and finding that it held on like a terrier, with no sign of loosing its hold, Mr Blackheath ran forward and struck his pick into its head. Even then the reptile held on,and it was not until it had been struck several blows with the pole of the pick that its jaws relaxed and it gave up the ghost. When the dog was released it was found that his foreleg had been broken at a point about two inches above the knee.

Mr Blackheath says he has met with several of the creatures known as Gila monsters that were two feet and two and a half feet in length, but never before or since saw,or even suspected the existence of one so large as that whose skin he possesses. It was a surprise to all the white men in that section, but some of the Indians asserted that far south in the Sierra Madre Mountains they had seen some that were as large or larger. Unfortunately , in flaying the saurian, in Mr Blackheath`s only idea was to have the hide tanned and made into boots and gaiters, therefore he did not preserve the feet otherwise the skin might be stuffed and mounted by a taxidermist. He says the teeth of the creature were over an inch in length , were sharp as needles, and in shape resembled the teeth of a shark.

FOUND INLAND

Advocate ( Louisiana) June 20^th 1941

McAlester ( Oklahoma). A 6-foot alligator was captured in  a flower garden at McAlester. And that`s something because McAlester is far inland from the haunts of alligators. Local experts theorized the `gator had been living in an abandoned coal mine partly filled with water.