It was just about an hour after daybreak, on the 4th of July in 1943, when Jim
Johnson, owner of the Triple T ranch, checked on his herd. He usually rode the
northern stretch of his 500-acre spread with Toby, one of the ranch hands, but he
had decided to go by himself today. Most of his men were taking the day off to
enjoy the day's festivities. He’d been a cattle rancher all his life, and when his
daddy died in ’38, he’d inherited the ranch. He couldn’t imagine doing anything
else.
He had ridden to the southeast ridge, near the river, when he spotted the half-eaten
carcass of one of his prized steers. As he neared the bloated body, he sensed danger as he reached for his rifle. There was movement in the tall grass near the edge of the water.
It wasn’t unusual to lose a calf or even a cow in the marshy water along the
shoreline of the Kissimmee River. He figured they’d lost three or four every year.
But this was an exceptionally large steer, and it was half-eaten.
It would have taken something very large to take down a twelve-hundred-pound
steer, and then to eat half of it.
Suspecting a cougar, or maybe even a couple of the big cats, he reached for his old
Remington Rifle, holstered to the saddlebag.
Nellie was acting scared. She’d been his favorite horse for years and seldom
showed fear. Once, when she was much younger, she stomped to death a den of
rattlesnakes, saving her life and Jim's. Whatever took down that steer was close by.
And she knew it.
As he neared the edge of the water, buzzards encircled the area. Looking and
listening, Jim saw nothing out of place.
Without warning, Nellie reared her front legs, and he watched in terror as a huge
creature attacked her hind quarter. Kicking frantically, she fell to her side as Jim
fired three shots into the side of the monster.
He could see that it was a giant alligator. Or was it a crocodile? He wasn’t sure.
He’d seen both, and occasionally, a large gator would attack a calf or one of his neighbor's sheep, but he’d never heard of one attempting to take down a full-grown
steer. And then eating half of it.
This was a big animal. Indeed, the largest he’d ever seen.
Alligators were pretty common along the shore of the Kissimmee River. On some
days, seeing dozens of them basking in the sun wasn't unusual. But they seldom
bothered the livestock.
He’d seen crocodiles before when he’d made a trip to the Thousand Islands in the
Everglades with his dad, but he thought they’ve never come this far north before,
and he had always heard that they didn’t get along very well with the gator
population.
Whatever this thing was, it was huge. The creature flipped Nellie over as he bit
deep into her hips.
He fired three more shots, trying desperately not to hit his horse. The monster let
go of Nellie, glaring ferociously and looked back at him.
Later, as Jim recounted the tale to his ranch hands, he said he could not tell if the
shots had hurt the animal or just pissed it off.
Either way, it moved menacingly toward Jim as he fired repeatedly.
Alligators and crocodiles can move amazingly fast on land, and even given this
creature's huge size, it was quickly closing in on him.
Then, just as he was bracing for the attack, another creature, larger than the first
came out of the tall grass and struck the giant reptile just behind the front legs.
The second beast was at least two feet longer than the first, and the two wrestled
and fought as they rolled toward the water's edge. The smaller of the two, suffering
deep cuts along its side, broke away from the larger creature's death grip and
quickly dove deep into the river water.
The larger gator, triumphant in the battle, continued to float on the surface as he
watched Jim reload his rifle and help Nellie back to her feet.
She was bleeding badly on her hip and Jim knew he had to take her back to the
barn and get a vet over to patch her up.
Watching over his shoulder as they walked away, he would never forget the size
and shape of this second monster. And he hoped their paths would never cross
again.
A few weeks later, when he met with a few of the other ranchers at a town hall
meeting, they, too, had seen something that resembled the monster Jim had seen.
They couldn’t agree on whether it was an alligator or a crocodile. But they could
all agree that whatever it was, it was close to twenty’ long and well over a
thousand pounds.
They all knew that alligators didn’t get that big.
Years went by before another incident occurred. Unlike Jim’s run-in with the
monster on land at the Kissimmee River's edge, it happened to a fisherman on Lake
Istokpoga this time.
There were many stories about what happened on that day in 1945. Some said it
was just a wild story, something made up to scare people. But others knew the
victim and believed the story to be true.
It seemed that old Doc Whitley, a retired pediatrician in Lake Placid, had launched
his small wooden rowboat at Windy Point in Lake Istokpoga that day, hoping to
catch a few crappies for the dinner table. At 82, Ron was still in surprisingly good
shape for his age, but his daughter worried about him alone on the lake.
When he didn’t get home for lunch, she got worried. Then, missing dinner was the
last straw. That evening, she went to the sheriff’s office after dark to report that her
dad had never made it home.
The sheriff and a few of his deputies drove down to Windy Point and found his old
beat-up Ford parked under one of the sprawling oak trees. No other vehicles were
there, and even in the darkness, there was no sign of movement anywhere.
The sheriff attempted to reassure his daughter that he probably got tired and
decided to camp on one of the islands, but he knew that was pretty unlikely. He
suspected that the old-timer had had a heart attack and died alone on the water.
They organized a search party early the next morning, and around 8:15 a.m., they
found the boat pushed into the reeds by the wind in a small cove on the Big Island.
The boat was still partially afloat but overturned, and the stern was gone, or at least
a couple of feet from it. There was no sign of the doc.
Further investigation revealed huge, deep cuts in the wooden structure of the boat,
indicating that something exceptionally large had bitten into it.
They all looked at each other. Could an alligator have attacked him while he was
fishing? It seemed pretty unlikely. It seemed impossible that a gator would attack a
boat and have the strength to bite through it.
They scratched their heads as they began a 5-day search for the body.
It was never found. Stories soon circulated that a monster alligator or crocodile
was roaming the lake, searching for its next meal.
Stories soon surfaced that it was over twenty-five feet long, weighing a ton, and
being seen everywhere from Okeechobee to Lake Istokpoga.
Having just read about one of the great Roman mythological characters, Hercules,
one of the local boys took it upon himself to name the beast.
Hercules was no longer a myth.
*The book Hercules – The Terror of Okeechobee is part of a trilogy of three books; Queenie – The Legend of Lake Istokpoga; and “The Old Man,” and will be available in late 2024.
