Would you purchase a huge alligator standing in the Heisman trophy pose?
A 63-year-old Tim Tebow fan is selling the 13-foot-4-inch alligator on eBay.
And for $15,000, it can be yours.
The gator is wearing a Tim Tebow jersey and holding a football signed by all three UF Heisman quarterbacks.
“Anybody with any Gator blood at all should be real excited about this,” said Don Perkins, the owner of the alligator.
He thinks Tebow, or “TimBo” as he calls him, might want it and said he has been trying to get in contact with him.
Perkins plans to distribute fliers to Gainesville sports bars and businesses.
He thinks the gator would look great on the football field and said he would bring it to a game, so it could be put next to the cheerleaders or paraded on the field at halftime.
Perkins has already emailed the athletic department.
His cousin, Dennis Perkins, whom he affectionately referred to as “my daddy’s brother’s youngin’,” caught the close-to-record-size gator in the Fisheating Creek Wildlife Management Area in November.
Dennis was called by law enforcement game wardens, Perkins said, to remove the 700-pound nuisance gator from the Palmdale area, because it was halting construction of a bridge over the creek.
Dennis told his cousin he had to see the alligator.
“I went down there three or four months after they had caught the gator,” Perkins said. “They had this thing in the freezer. I just couldn’t get over how big his head was.”
The hide was rolled up and tied with string and rope. Its head was hanging off one end.
“It was a huge ball. It took three grown men to get it out of the freezer,” he said.
Perkins said as soon as he saw it in the freezer, he knew that there was something special about the gator.
Then he had an idea.
“I thought: ‘Man, wouldn’t it be cool if we could find a taxidermist to mount the gator standing up like it was throwing a ball?’”
Perkins said he immediately thought of putting a Tebow jersey on the gator and an autographed ball in its hand.
“I think the world of Tim Tebow,” Perkins said. “I’m a Christian. He’s my idol. I’d like to meet him one day and shake his hand.”
Perkins said it was hard to find a taxidermist to mount a gator standing up. Then he found John Walker.
Walker, of John Walker Taxidermy in DeLand, said he does about 70 percent of gator mounting in the country and ships some orders overseas.
Walker’s business is unique because most taxidermy places can only put gators in a crawling position.
“I actually pioneered the whole gator mounting thing from the beginning,” Walker said. “We do custom poses — things that other taxidermists don’t do.”
Perkins said Walker charged him $4,500 for the mounting because of the steel needed for support.
The project took more than five months.
“It was a big undertaking, but we do a lot of big undertakings,” said Walker, who said he has done gators for Shaquille O’Neal and country singer Travis Tritt.
While the gator was at the taxidermist’s, Perkins’ son Josh helped him search for a jersey and autographed ball online.
They purchased a triple extra-large jersey and had it altered to make the neck bigger, and they also had Velcro sewn down the front like a button-up shirt.
“I didn’t want any football,” Perkins said, adding that he wanted to find one with at least Tebow’s signature.
His son found one for $500 on a sports memorabilia website that also had Danny Wuerffel’s and Steve Spurrier’s signatures — all three of Florida’s Heisman trophy winners.
Perkins traveled to DeLand to pick up the mounted gator in mid-August. It was the first time he would be able to see if the altered jersey fit.
Putting the jersey on the gator was like helping dress a child, Perkins said.
“The jersey fits him perfectly, like it was made for him.”
The gator traveled on a trailer to Brunswick and stopped in Lake Mary to appear on FOX 35 news on Aug. 17.
On the drive back home, hundreds of people took pictures of the gator, hanging out their car windows and waving their cellphones around.
“I think I’m on YouTube.”
He stopped at Popeyes to get some fried chicken and the entire restaurant came outside to get a closer look, he said.
“Whenever I stopped to get gas, people just mauled me wanting to take pictures with their kids with it.”
When Perkins got home, he started to sell the gator on eBay.
At the request of his friends, he has finally given it a name — George.
Perkins said he has considered bringing George to the Florida football game against Georgia.
“If I don’t have it sold by then, there ain’t nothing I’d rather do than bring it to that game.”
