`Alligator Man' called when wild animals found

SAVANNAH - Two giant bleached skulls filled with sharp teeth peer from a shelf in the shed where Jack Douglas keeps cow lungs for bait. Inside his walk-in cooler, a scaly eight-foot carcass waits to be skinned. <br> <br> For those who never see the cinder-block shacks of Douglas&#39; work camp in Savannah at the end of a dirt road, the hand-painted slogan on his Chevy pickup says it all: ``Gator&#39;s Worst Nightmare.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> The 56-year-old Douglas is officially called a nuisance animal trapper, meaning he catches all manner of critters that wander from the wild into people&#39;s paths. He&#39;s snared a skunk in a bowling alley and captured a wild chicken at a hospital. <br> <br> But folks at Chatham County Animal Control know Douglas simply as the ``Alligator Man.&#39;&#39; Eight to ten times a week during the summer, his pager beeps with another gator-on-the-loose call. <br> <br> He&#39;s been dispatched to capture alligators in people&#39;s driveways and on the runway at Savannah International Airport. He&#39;s caught them swimming in fishing ponds and napping in one of Savannah&#39;s downtown squares. <br> <br> Douglas is one of 14 trappers in Georgia licensed by the state to catch alligators, which came off the endangered species list in 1977 and are now deemed threatened only because of their resemblence to still-endangered crocodiles. <br> <br> Douglas has been chasing gators since 1989, when the Georgia Department of Natural Resources decided to hire outside trappers to handle a growing number of alligator complaints.