From the Boston _Globe_, 29 August 1995 (I still don't know whether to believe it):

Alligator became a hunter of hunt dogs

Baying of hounds rang dinner bell

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Rufus Godwin learned the fate of his missing hunting dog Flojo when a 500-pound alligator coughed up the animal's electronic tracking collar.

In the animal, trappers found tags and collars of six more hounds.

For the past 20 years, hunting dogs have been disappearing in the Blackwater River State Forest.[...]

Godwin had set loose Flojo, a $5,000 Walker fox-hunting hound, in the forest about 45 miles northeast of Pensacola. The last he heard of her was her baying on the chase.

He was searching for her with her electronic collar tracking device when he caught a faint signal. Jamie Sauls, with Godwin, also got signals from the collar of a dog he had lost weeks earlier.

"When we walked up to this hole, just all of a sudden the boxes went to beeping out of sight. They just went wide open," Godwin said[...].

The 10-foot, 11-inch reptile was captured Aug. 15 by state-contracted alligator hunters.

Four men harpooned the beast, taped its mouth shut and wrestled it until they had the animal hogtied. During the struggle the alligator spit up Flojo's $125 tracking collar.

In the alligator's stomach, the trappers found a collection of dog collars. One was from a dog belonging to Aden Fleming that disappeared 14 years ago.

The alligator was estimated to be 50 years old.

--- Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||: "God wills it" gives the wrong kind of comfort to count as an explanation. :||