Will said he would check the address out for me. By then, the pandemic had hit, and I was locked down in Orlando. He found the same disconnected phone numbers that I had, and we used those as a touchstone to find an address. We both hunted for Jeff ’s information and then compared notes. Completely by accident-after a misunderstanding turned argument turned thoughtful discussion on the social platform-I befriended Will, a former army intelligence agent, who volunteered to help me track Jeff down. I had to find Jeff Babauta.Īs many a strange experience does, the next phase of my search began on Twitter. When I reached the end of my clues, I knew that if I wanted to keep going there was only one thing I could do. No heroes, no villains, just the desperate choices that make us who we are. I wanted to live the lives of rangers and wildlife officers, too. Was what happened to the poachers caught in Operation Alligator Thief ’s trap fair? Was it legal? I wanted to understand what it was like to be a poacher in the glades. So too did it seem a story in life’s gray areas. It was a story of people like me, like these python hunters I sat with out in the glades-not outlandish characters, but folks who could have been my neighbors.

Of course, this brought me back to Operation Alligator Thief. Understanding them, not just why they do the things they do, but the complex and nuanced heart of who they are, is my writing raison d’être. Even when I’m not writing about Florida, I know I have to challenge my preconceptions, or I might just miss the truth as it goes flying so close to my face that it almost hits me. They fail to be open to the real adventure, to the truth about the place, and to the real lives of the people who call it home and they end up writing their stereotypical preconceptions. They get one concept in their minds-Florida Man, say-or they’re too busy playing adventurer, and they manage to walk by the truly extraordinary without a second glance. Just as many writers miss the majesty of the Everglades while they’re determined to find something else, writers miss the people of the Everglades, too. But if you’re looking for something else, you might miss it. To bastardize a Gertrude Stein quote, there is so much there there.

You could explore the Everglades for years and never see it all. I’ve seen so many things and people here maligned and misunderstood. As we gazed out over the black water, a companionable silence fell between us, and we stood in mutual reverence at the altar of nature’s savage beauty. “When you really know the Everglades-and not many people do-that’s when you fall in love,” one of the hunters said. Yet as fireflies drifted like motes over the sawgrass, a sense of wonder gripped my heart.

In my mind, the glades had been home to alligators, pythons, a bounty of mosquitoes, and not much else. Before that day, I had always thought of the Everglades as a massive wilderness, untamed and inhospitable. I found kindred spirits in them.Īfter spending the entire day with the hunters, trawling the levees for invasive snakes, we stopped where the levees forked and took a break as the last breaths of light drained from the expansive sky. They were funny, too, with a humor that was equal parts dark and zany, just like my own. They were intelligent, compassionate conservationists. Out on the glades with the hunters, I quickly realized they weren’t who I expected, some caricature of rugged, bloodthirsty hunters. I had come there on Outside magazine’s dime to write a story about python hunters. That night, I looked out of my window on the casino’s tenth floor, drinking in the surreal feeling of the trip. In January 2020, I drove down from Orlando to the easternmost edge of the Everglades and booked a room in the neon-dazzled Miccosukee Casino & Resort, a hotel in the no-man’s-land between the glitz of Miami and the seemingly endless wilderness of the glades.

See you later alligator poem