The Superior Express -

I’m responsible for monitoring a number of email accounts. At work I have one computer on my desk used exclusively for internet related tasks including monitoring email. During the work day, at least four email accounts are open, sometimes more. I haven’t counted but I suspect most days, hundreds of email messages are received. This morning one prolific sender sent the same message to four accounts. I responded to one and threw the other three away.

In my haste to skim through the messages, I sometimes regretfully overlook an important one.

On a recent morning while skimming the email, one from a Kansas state agency which included the word “alligator” in the subject line jumped out at me.

I was hopeful the email would solve the mystery surrounding last year’s theft of alligators from a Manhattan pet store. After one of the missing alligators was found in Wildcat Creek west of the KSU campus, Rita helped me post a spoof slide show on the internet. I had seen a piece of driftwood snagged on a Republican River sandbar near Superior. I thought the old log looked somewhat like an alligator and the slide show included pictures of this editor and his wife exploring along the river in search of the missing alligator. After I spotted the imaginary alligator, Rita took pictures of me trying to run through a corn field to escape the monstor.

Another time I took a picture of the alligator log a prankster painted in Superior’s Lincoln Park.

With an alligator headline, I had to stop and read the state story. Turned out it wasn’t what I suspected. The story reported on a fisherman catching an alligator gar. Over the years I’ve devoted a lot of time to exploring the Republican River between Red Cloud and Hardy and I have seen gars taken from the river but if the story is correct, I’ve never seen or caught an alligator gar. That’s okay because gars are nasty looking creaturs. Think too much about them and I might be afraid to venture into the river and that would be too bad.

I’ve had lots of fun in and along the river and want to encourage more folks to discover our local rivers. A person never knows what they may find at the river.

Here’s the aligator gar story:

On a warm night earlier this fall one angler fishing the Neosho River east of Parsons caught something he probably never expected to see – a four and a half-foot, 39.5-pound Alligator Gar. The kicker? Alligator Gar aren’t native to Kansas and have never been documented here.

Though not always common, alligator gar are distributed from southwestern Ohio and southeastern Missouri and Illinois, south to the Gulf of Mexico, and a small portion of northeastern Mexico. A predatory fish, alligator gar are sometimes referred to as “living fossils” since fossil records trace them back nearly 100 million years. As the name implies, alligator gar are easily identified by their broad snouts that loosely resemble that of the American alligator. Alligator gar are the largest gar species with specimens weighing more than 300 pounds and measuring more than 8 feet long. Just three gar species are native to Kansas: Longnose, shortnose, and spotted gar. Longnose gar are the most common and largest gar species in Kansas. While the longnose gar are common in the state and reach lengths exceeding 5 feet, they are distinguished from the alligator gar by a narrow snout and smaller overall size, among other characteristics. So, Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks Fisheries biologists asked, “What’s an alligator gar doing in the Neosho River?”

It’s a good question, and one biologists are attempting to answer.

“We’re confident the information from the angler is accurate and the fish was, in fact, caught from the Neosho River,” said KDWP Fisheries biologist Connor Ossowski. “However, that doesn’t mean the fish originated from the river.”

To determine the fish’s origins, KDWP biologists have several unique options.

Since all states involved in alligator gar reintroduction efforts for populations in decline have been tagging each hatchery-produced alligator gar, KDWP staff had the option of looking for a tag. After using a “wand” to detect any identification markers, KDWP staff are confident this catch was not part of a formal reintroduction effort.

“Because most populations of this species can be distinguished from one another with a sample of the fish’s fins, another option we’re considering is genetic identification,” said KDWP assistant director of fisheries research, Jeff Koch. “This will tell us if the fish came from an existing population in another state.”

If genetic testing doesn’t pan out, not all hope is lost; biologists would still have one more option. “Micro-chemistry is another technique at our disposal,” Koch added.

Microchemistry is performed by measuring the elemental proportion of a bone on a given fish and comparing it to the elemental concentration of a surrounding water. If consistencies exist, the data may be able to help biologists determine at least how long the fish had been in the Neosho River.

Of all the potential scenarios for how this giant came to be in the Neosho River, there’s one hypothesis that rings the truest – the possibility that the Kansas-caught alligator gar was released from an aquarium.

“It’s not unlikely that this fish was once somebody’s pet or purchased from a pet store, and simply released into the river once it became too large,” said Doug Nygren, KDWP Fisheries Division director. “These techniques should allow us to determine which mode of introduction occurred.”

Time will tell if the Neosho River alligator gar made its way to the Sunflower State by natural or assisted means. It would be difficult for this fish to have made its way to Kansas naturally, due to the distance to the nearest population and the series of dams along the river, but it may have.

Other strange things have been found in the river and that is one of the reasons why I enjoy visiting the river.