Florida Woman

- [Female Interviewer] Is there anything that you're scared of?

- No, not really.

Men.

[Mary laughs] - [Clifford] I remember rolling up.

There was, like, a sign about like a beware of the alligator.

Just bizarre.

- [Mary] It was a media frenzy.

It was a people frenzy.

- [Clifford] It just blew up.

Social media, the way that it works now, it's instant.

- [Female Speaker] You like alligators?

- Yeah, I don't like people hurting them.

Let's put it that way.

- When Rambo gets lonely, he'll come up there and crawl in bed with the dogs.

That's no big deal.

- And she fought for Rambo.

Really.

I never thought she'd ever lose him.

- The world needs Florida.

The world needs crazy.

You know, it's good to have a shock to the system every now and then.

♪ [ambient music] [soft bluegrass music] ♪ - [Clifford] You meet a lot of people when you're working for the paper, but this is a difficult one to forget.

[soft bluegrass music] I remember rolling up.

There's the gate out front.

There was like a sign about like a beware of the alligator.

Yeah, just bizarre.

[train horn blowing] [soft bluegrass music] [dog barking] ♪ ♪ - Willow!

Are you waiting on your food?

Hold on, we gotta get the food.

[woman laughs] What?

You want that?

You smell like a pig today.

I'm Mary Thorn.

I'm from Lakeland, Florida, born and raised.

I'm a full-blooded Southerner.

Growing up, I was a tomboy, and there wasn't many kids to play with, but we always had some kind of critter in our house.

No matter what.

My dad worked at a tropical fish farm.

And whenever the gators got in the pond I would fish 'em out and I got to play with 'em.

So I would put 'em Barbie doll clothes and make them real fancy.

So I was putting clothes on about three or four on gators, and they got my dad in trouble.

They fined him like $5,000.

I wasn't allowed to play with gators for a while.

But ever since then, I've had gators.

- [Female Interviewer] Most people are, are scared of alligators.

- Good.

- [Female Interviewer] Is there anything that you're scared of?

- No, not really.

Men.

[Mary laughs] Ex-husbands.

Other than that, no.

I mean, people will say all kinds of stuff, but I've seen with my gators that it's not true.

I mean, when Rambo gets lonely, he'll come up there and crawl in bed with the dogs and me, so that's no big deal to me.

It's only really bad on cold mornings because he's so cold that, yeah, I'm outta bed.

He'll freeze you to death 'cuz he is cold blooded.

[Mary laughs] [birds singing] - [Clifford] This is March 17th... March 17th, 2016.

I ran on the front of the B section.

Retired pro wrestler determined not to let state take her pet away.

"Everybody tells me he is vicious but I kiss him on the mouth.

How can he be vicious?

He doesn't have a vicious bone in his body."

Somebody emailed me and said, like, "Hey, there's this lady that has this alligator, and they're threatening to take it away.

Would you be interested in writing a story?"

And you know, of course, I'm going to write that story.

[Clifford laughs] It's a, yeah, it's a lady with a pet alligator that's trained.

What's not to love?

I think I was probably out there for a good few hours.

I like to take my time when I'm doing interviews and actually get to know the person.

So, just went out there and hung out at her house for a while.

It's very bizarre to conduct an interview with somebody who's holding an alligator, but, I mean, you can domesticate a lot of things, but I don't, I don't really the domestic alligator.

That was a new one for me.

I mean, at one point she was doing this to it and it was opening and closing its mouth.

It was very strange, but so, just so human but that like strange human type stuff, you know like everybody's got their weird things.

And then when you get to step into somebody else's world like that, it's like, you know, it's like, wow.

You know, people live, everybody lives differently.

This is, this is one way to live, you know with a five foot alligator in your home.

[dog barking] - One thing I feel very, very strongly about- if an animal's in the wild, you need to leave it in a wild because he belongs there.

He was there before we were.

The gators I get are gators that can't live in the wild.

So quite a few years ago, somebody had taken five of them out of the wild.

Babies, hatchlings.

Put 'em in a closet.

No light in a closet- dirty, nasty smelling, 10 gallon tank.

They were on top of each other and had 'em there for four years.

So they never had the ability to grow.

So these gators were really stunned.

So they brought 'em up there to the alligator farm that I worked at, and nobody knew what to do with them.

So the only other choice would be to put them down.

And I said, "I'll give it a try."

And that's how I got 'em.

Their immune systems had been affected by being in the dark.

If a spot of light came through whatever we had him in, that would blister, so we knew we had to find something to, you know, cure that.

So, what, back to my old habits and putting clothes on gators and the sunscreen and anything else that we could do to protect them.

So these gators were nothing like a typical gator, and that made some of the people that have reptiles, you know, they're saying, that's gonna bite.

This is gonna do this.

They never did it.

They were more like kids than gators.

I know people think, but that, that lady's crazy.

She just, you know, is way over the hill with this stuff until they saw him do it.

And then it was like, "Oh, I can't believe that gator did that!"

[birds chirping] [dog barking] - [James] I'm as crazy as Mary is, okay?

[James laughs] But we've been friends I don't know how many years.

For quite a few of 'em.

She loves animals to just put it mildly.

She loves animals.

She didn't want animals being hurt or anything else.

- [Female Interviewer] Do you like alligators?

- Yeah, I don't like people hurting them.

Let's put it that way.

People know what an alligator is.

They're afraid of 'em, so they go out killing alligators just to be killing 'em and cuttin' them up, leavin' 'em out there.

But, if people had education, knowledge that's come down here, we wouldn't have the problems we have.

[soft bluegrass music] - I wanted to give back to the community, and they were the best teaching tool that anybody could ever want.

They could book us.

They teach the kids what they needed to know, and they could touch, feel, and experience stuff that they couldn't with other gators.

[soft bluegrass music] We used to go through a routine.

We put sunscreen on 'em and clothes on 'em, and then they knew they were working and they were happy.

[soft bluegrass music] But their immune systems have been affected by being in the dark.

And over the years, all the rest of the gators, they died from the sun.

So then it was just Rambo, but we still did our shows, until they decided to take them away from me.

- If you're trying to take something away from somebody, and, and that was like, the whole point of the article was just to basically, like, that was the whole story was, you know, it's one thing that she had the alligator, but then the other part of it was like, yeah, they're gonna take it away.

So went Florida Fish and Wildlife trying to figure out what the actual laws are.

You know, what laws is she breaking?

And I think the overall thing was just like a safety concern, you know?

Like, it's a, at the... it's a Gator, like that thing can destroy you if it wants to, And I think that were just worried.

I mean, like, even like the nicest dog can have a bad day and bite someone, and you know, the dog bite is one thing, but an alligator bite is like a whole 'nother ballgame, so.

But, the flip side to that is all of us have, at one point in our lives, lost like a, you know a dog or a cat or something like that.

And I imagine it would've been, you know, pretty similar to that.

- I had a regular inspector that came by for all the years that I had gators.

He had moved on.

They got a new inspector.

He said that gator's getting big.

And I said, well, you know, get... that's what Gator do, you know?

He says, I think he's too big for here.

I said, well, he's sun sensitive.

He can't go outside, you know?

And he says, "Well, do you got paperwork for that?"

And I did.

Then he comes back and he says, "Well you're gonna have to give Rambo away," you know, "to a gator farm."

And I said, "He won't never last.

You put him in with other gators, they're going to eat him because he is weaker.

If you put him in the sun, he's gonna roll over and die."

So I wasn't a rule breaker, but I said, "You're not taking my gator.

You'll have to shoot me too."

I mean, it's just gonna be that simple.

- My article was the first one that came out on the gator, but I guess it's not too surprising that it went all over the place.

It just blew up, you know.

Social media, the way that it works now, it's instant.

- [James] I was surprised it went as far as it did tell you truth.

But they came from all over to put their two cents in.

- At four o'clock in the morning, first call I get is, "Good day, Tampa Bay."

He says, "Mary, I'm in your yard.

Can you bring Rambo out?"

[Mary laughs] I'm like, what?

- [First Female News Anchor] Many of us have pets we love.

And we would do anything in the world to keep them.

- It was a media frenzy.

It was a people frenzy.

- [Second Female News Anchor] Rambo is a 15 year old alligator that's been living in a home under the care of a woman.

- [Third Female News Anchor] And they've gotten a quite close, quite close relationship there.

The woman is fighting to keep the gator.

- Some of 'em were really rude, called me stupid and names.

- [Male Speaker] People who live in Florida and raise gators, like may be ignorant.

- [Third Female News Anchor] To see her kiss that, that's cringe worthy.

- We have completely opened public records laws in Florida.

So I mean, everything is wide open.

It makes it easier as a journalist to find stories and stuff, but it's hard on people for a variety of different reasons.

Basically, like, crazy stuff happens everywhere, but in Florida, we just have access to it.

And the reporters know those are the kind of stories that get the hits.

If there's a story to be told, you gotta tell it properly and you gotta tell it right, and actually get to know the person and not just, you know, the headline.

- Yeah, you're not gonna get anything unless you paid for it.

And she fought for Rambo.

Really.

I never thought she'd ever lose him.

[soft music] - I went through, I think, two years of this.

People said awful things.

But, you know, you can't change everybody's mind.

[Mary laughs] And stuff like that doesn't bother me.

I was called awful things when I was a bad guy wrestler.

[Mary laughs] I was in wrestling from 1966 on up.

So I was just raised in it.

And in wrestling, we're still old school, you know.

If you do something to my family, I'm, I'm back 'em up.

So when I heard what people were saying about Rambo, I'd just go on there and I'd correct 'em.

I said, "Now, how would you feel?"

What I need people to know is, you know... With the media, I do a whole speech, and it usually gets through pretty well.

...I do want to keep him, that nobody's in harm.

And they, they turned around.

They actually turned around at what they were thinking.

[soft instrumental music] Please don't take my Rambo.

[Male Reporter laughs] - [Male News Anchor] Gator lives better than I do.

- [Male Speaker] Save Rambo.

[audience applauding] - [Older Man] I vote, I vote for save Rambo, too.

- The FWC had so many people calling them, I think it scared them.

People were going by there mad, calling in mad.

The Facebook was all jammed up with people saying, you know, they're wrong.

- I'm gonna say this: Rambo's got a better life right here than he would out there on this.

That's her son.

Seriously.

And he knows it, too.

- This is his jacket.

I did all the embroidery on these.

That's in the pool with the 41 gators right here.

This thing he's had forever.

You know, one day you might find me laying in the bottom of that gator thing, but that's the life I chose.

And you know, to me, I wouldn't trade any of the memories, 'cuz all my memories with Rambo are cool.

- I was waiting to hear what Florida Fish and Wildlife was going to do, but I was expecting her to, to lose him.

'Cuz this is so much jargon that comes along with all of that.

Not being to really under, able to really understand, you know, what you're doing wrong, how you you can correct it.

All those types of things.

- [Male News Anchor] Mary has been fighting Florida wildlife workers for months now to keep Rambo.

- But, I guess it's kinda like the responsibility of the media is to put the pressure on when the pressure needs to be put on.

So yeah, positive changes can happen.

- [First Male News Anchor] State conservation officials just reversing course.

- [Second Male News Anchor] State wildlife officials gave her permission to keep the reptile, but Thorn isn't allowed to showcase Rambo in public.

- Well, Rambo got his license so that he can stay at home.

He will be staying with me forever.

I'm happy he's home, but he's so bored.

He's just lays there like he's missing out on something.

He's not allowed to take pictures anymore or be on exhibit, so it's gonna be all different for Rambo.

He can't even go to his favorite McDonald's like we used to.

I mean, we held up the line for an hour, them feeding him hamburgers.

[Mary laughs] - I don't think that he's being done right.

He's always been out, around people doing things around people.

Now he can't do it.

A lot of people want him out there.

He was life.

Really.

- I'm glad that she got to keep him, you know.

We need more people like that that are willing to take those kind of risks and prove that it can happen, you know.

The world needs Florida.

The world needs crazy.

You know, it's good to have a shock to the system every now and then.

[birds chirping] - Each one of the gators were named after their personalities, and he was the most courageous gator out of the bunch.

No, no outside.

[sad instrumental music] Good?

Hm?

Is it good, hm?

Yeah.

Where my glasses?

See the TV?

Right there.

Oh, I don't wanna get rid of him if I can keep him.

But I think Rambo is kind of lonely, as far as, you know, not being around the people anymore and stuff like that.

- [Female Interviewer] Are you lonely?

- Me?

No.

I have plenty to keep my time going.

Cleaning up for pig, three chickens, one pissy squirrel, and then the alligator.

[Mary laughs] [soft bluegrass music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪