A SOUTH Carolina woman’s killing of a massive alligator – which weighed in at 1025lb (465kg) and more than 13 feet (3.9m) in length – created a global sensation today as photographs and video of the dead gator became online hits.
In particular the size contrast between the gator and the hunter — Massachusetts resident Mary Ellen Mara-Christian, 48 – was drawing comparison, with the laid-off bank marketing officer just 5ft 5in (165cm) and 115lb (52kg).
Mara-Christian had obtained a permit for South Carolina’s month-long alligator hunting season.
Permit rules specify that a hunter is only allowed to kill a single gator and the animal must be brought to the boat before it can be killed, with alligator hunting considered to be part fishing, part hunting.
Mara-Christian said it took the hunting party two hours at Lake Moultrie to secure the gator so they could shoot it, but when her .22-caliber gun was not powerful enough to kill it, she used a knife to sever its spinal cord.
The dead gator – a male aged between 60 and 70 years – was taken to a meat processor in South Carolina, while the skin will go to a taxidermist so Mara-Christian can display it.
“I came down to South Carolina hoping for a 10-footer and I just lucked out (to get) one of the biggest ones people have ever seen,” she said.
First reported in the US late Friday, by today photographs and video of the alligator and Mara-Christian were seen across the world.
Mara-Christian’s husband Mark Christian told CBS Early Show on Saturday Morning co-anchor Betty Nguyen he helped out in the epic battle: “It was the tug-of-war of a lifetime.”
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