Copyright New York Post
A South Carolina mom of two killed a 12-foot alligator on a hunt with her family during the tail-end of her maternity leave and plans to turn the carcass into a full-body rug. Brittany Livingston, who gave birth to her second child just five months ago, earned the nickname “Gator Girl” after passersby posted videos of her family rolling through a McDonald’s drive-thru with a hulking alligator carcass in the back of their truck. “We had a lot of eyes on us. People were waving, giving thumbs up…even the workers at McDonald’s came outside to see it,” Brittany told WCSC. Brittany and her husband, Matt Livingston, were planning the hunt on and off again for the last five years. In South Carolina, alligator hunting tags are awarded through a seasonal lottery system run by the state’s Department of Natural Resources. It’s overrun each year, with more than 12,000 people applying for a slim 1,400 available tags. The denials came like clockwork, but Brittany was finally called this year and wasn’t going to let the opportunity go to waste, though she admitted that gator hunting isn’t exactly “something most people do on maternity leave.” The couple secured the 12-foot, 597-pound alligator, affectionately nicknamed “Chomp Norris,” after many grueling hours hunting it through the marshlands in September. The hunting couple assured that they will make use of the entire alligator to help teach their children about the importance of honoring nature — even though their 3-year-old son thought their bounty was a “dinosaur.” “We wouldn’t hunt anything if we weren’t going to eat it. We respect the wildlife just as much, and we want it to still be here for our kids,” Matt told the outlet. The Livingstons said that they will make a full-body rug out of the alligator and harvest the meat to cook gator sausages and snack sticks. They already dropped the gator off at a family business that has been processing wild game for generations. The workers were able to take the carcass and make more than 100 pounds of meat products that were preserved for display, the outlet reported. Alligator hunting season only lasts from September to October. During the most recent period, only 438 alligators of the Palmetto State’s estimated 100,000 were harvested.
