Chicago Gator Hunt 2k19 Finally Comes To An End After Gator Frank Catches It

Chicago Gator Hunt Day 1 Recap

Chicago Gator Hunt Day 2 Recap

Chicago Dog Walk featuring Gator Nick

Ranking Every “Gator” Person’s Odds Of Catching The Alligator

We’re closing the curtains on Chicago Gator Hunt 2k19 and I couldn’t be more relieved if I tried. Since last Tuesday I’ve spent about 85 hours staring at a pond with my camera cocked, sandwiched between children and Gator Ricks, wondering where it all went wrong. I heard the news as soon as I woke up and I knew I had to immediately find a fuckin’ E-scooter to get to this god forsaken lagoon at 9am (basically the crack of dawn when you work nights at a bar) to wrap this saga up. I left my credentials at home again so I had limited access to good coverage:

Gator Frank is exactly who we thought he’d be—a man who takes his job of catching a wild alligator in the middle of a family friendly park way too seriously. I had to give him 2:1 odds in the “Gator” People rankings yesterday strictly because he’s from Florida, and it legit killed me to do that to Gator Rick and the artist formerly known as Gator Bob. Felt like betting against your home team. It could have been any of us holding Humbolito up there, but Gator Frank was the one who ended up with the heavy net in the end. Almost worse than the Thrones finale. Everyone’s hard work and commitment to the hunt the past 7 days is still acknowledged and thanked by (only) Barstool Chicago though. The rest of the Gator family loosened the bottle cap and Florida Frank got the credit for opening it. What makes it worse is that this was the perfect size alligator for new gator hunters to start off with:

I got to meet a couple capital Js this week while I was lowercase J’ing in the field. Most thought I was just some weirdo kid (pretty fair) who was about to Facebook live himself pencil-diving into the swamp, so they started talking to me since they figured I was an “Is this from the Onion??” article waiting to happen. Funny how “friends” start coming out of the woodwork after they see you on local news for 5 seconds. But in all honesty, most of the competition was pretty cool and we won’t forget what we all shared this past week together despite them asking what my name is again every day.

You should really be thinking about the safety of the staff first, but I’ll take it. Of course I wanted to include reporter Mike’s tweet as an undercover brag, but also because this was the tweet of mine that a known Chicago capital R responded to:

If you openly admit that you do drugs on camera then your job won’t even bother drug testing you. Grandpa’s old advice. Thanks to everyone who came out for Gator Week 2k19. You already know because of all the headlines this created that some asshole is chucking another alligator in here at some point, so until then.

PS- People have been curious about my wardrobe change between the 1st video this morning where I was running to the park and the 2nd video of me post-dab pen O.D. If you choose to keep reading what I’m writing, this will be addressed in next week’s Irritable Bowel Syndrome Diaries. Turns out I’m not a morning jogger. And yeah, there was a need to change the shirt too.