Another 'Gator Tale...

[Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967]

About six miles north of the Mexican border is the little town of Donna, Texas.  Tiny place, with a population of around 16,000 or so, Donna is named after great great great aunt Donna Hooks Fletcher.

 

Donna was a colorful sort in her day; rancher, businesswoman, pioneer.... when Mexican revolutionaries were doing border raids, she was known to be seen with a Bible in one hand and a pistol in the other.  Most of her accomplishments were made as a single woman - she was married at age 16; eight years later, she became a divorcee.  Scandalous, in those days - didn't slow her down a bit!

 

So I was reading her memoirs the other day and came across this short li'l story - I'd heard about it when I was a kid, but it was fun to "hear" it in her own words:

 

Quote

 

     

       "I was married in September, 1895, to Clyde W. Fletcher, son of William A. Fletcher, a large scale lumber operator, whose humming sawmills were reducing huge bodies of timber to great stretches of desolate stump land.

 

       "Father Fletcher liked to hunt, at which he was an expert.  His elaborate hunting lodge on the Neches River was a wonderland of wild life, and there he taught me how to shoot.  By the hour I would sit while he regaled me with tales of his adventures in the woods and on the river.

 

       "One day, on my way home, I rode by a deep, alligator-infested lake.  At least it was inhabited by one old bull alligator, which all the big hunters had unsuccessfully tried to bag.  Breathlessly alert as my eyes scanned the lake’s shoreline, I was thrilled to spot his periscope eyes moving across the water.  With my carbine I took quick dead aim and cut loose.  I seemed to have hit him in a vital spot, so I hurried back to the lodge to report my kill.  With a team of horses the foreman dragged that marsh monster to the lodge.  He measured ten feet eight inches long, and was such a fine specimen that Father Fletcher sent the carcass to San Antonio for mounting."

 

 

 

Of course, by the time I came along, no one I asked had any idea what ever became of the stuffed 'gator.  

 

Donna passed in 1969, at 90 years of age.

 

 

                                                                                                                     Donna Hooks Fletcher

 

                                                                                       

 

 

 

 

[Charlie Harley, #14153]

Now that’s a cool story.

[Yellowhouse Sam # 25171]

Well, have been there many times and didn't know the story!

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

She doesn't look like a gator killer.  She looks like someone I would have followed around.

[Tex Wilson]

2 hours ago, Forty Rod SASS 3935 said:

She doesn't look like a gator killer.  She looks like someone I would have followed around.

 

And you probably would have ended up like that ol' gator. 

[Cat Brules]

Very pretty girl.  A wonderful photograph of her, too.  Sounds like the real Texas girls I liked to date.  Smart, proud and self reliant.

 

Cat Brules

[Badger Mountain Charlie SASS #43172]

7 hours ago, Charlie Harley, #14153 said:

Now that’s a cool story.

And a cool woman. 

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

10 hours ago, Arizona Gunfighter said:

 

And you probably would have ended up like that ol' gator. 

Might have been worth it.  Wellllllllll, maybe not.