The 10-foot alligator under Porkchop Guillot's boat trailer

Or 'The Monster of Duchamp Road'

Posted July 23rd, 2009
HAVE A DRINK – Rolland “Porkchop” Guillot (left) and buddy Mike Douet clown around with a dead alligator Guillot found, very much alive, under his trailered boat.
Arlene Guillot

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    ST. MARTINVILLE – As a hunter and a fisherman, Rolland “Porkchop” Guillot is more than familiar with alligators. But he never expected to find one in his own yard.

    Porkchop and his wife, Arlene, live off Duchamp Road, on a hill rising 32 feet above the streets of St. Martinville.

    “During the flood of 1927, this hill is where people gathered,” Porkchop says.

    Yet the other day, Porkchop went out to his shed to fetch a gasoline can and was startled by a loud hiss and snap coming from beneath his trailered boat. He thought it was an ill-tempered neighborhood pit bull he had peppered in the butt with birdshot, now back for revenge. But no, it was a 10-foot alligator, showing its teeth all the way back to its tonsils and hovering on its stout bowed legs, ready to charge.

    Porkchop – who had been prepared to kick ampersands and exclamation points out of a mere pit bull – wheeled around and high-stepped it to the house.

    When he phoned the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, he could tell they were shaving his estimate of the gator’s length, probably by a pretty good bit.

    “People get excited and exaggerate, I guess,” Porkchop says. “I could be stretching it, I told them. It might just be an eight-footer, but it can’t stay in my yard. It’s gotta go.”

    When the crew came out to catch and relocate the gator, and saw how big it really was, they agreed. It had to go to the big swamp in the sky, being way too large to manhandle alive.

    “Like they said, if it came up to this house, it’ll go to another house,” says Porkchop.

    Pacified with a .410 shotgun, the gator measured one inch over 10 feet.

    “The scary thing is, how big is the alligator that ran that one out of the swamp and up this hill?” Porkchop says.

    “Now when I walk out my door, I look both ways.”