Posted on 04/15/2010 10:04:19 AM PDT by BradtotheBone
April's warming temperatures are triggering increased activity among a couple of disparate groups with whom Texas game wardens regularly interact: boaters and alligators.
Enforcing boating safety regulations — the Texas Water Safety Act — is a major part of game wardens' duties. And those laws cover a broad reach that includes boat titling and registration as well as required safety equipment and operation of boats.
Game wardens are particularly aggressive in enforcing a couple of boating-related laws: regulations mandating children younger than 13 wear a personal floatation device when a boat is underway and boating-while-intoxicated laws. If you have to ask why wardens cut no slack for those violations, you've never seen what can result from ignoring those laws. Wardens have.
Alligators?
Texas has hundreds of thousands of the reptiles; almost every piece of water in the eastern third of the state holds alligators. Come April, those gators begin getting antsy as their annual breeding season cranks up. Gators, especially males, begin wandering, looking to claim their own territory for the breeding season.
Wandering alligators end up in all sorts of places: streets, yards, swimming pools, even garages. And Texas game wardens get flooded with calls from folks freaked out over a gator on their lawn or in the ditch behind their home.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.chron.com ...
Its still a government job - you go home everyday no later than 5:00 and retire at 55.
I live southwest of Houston. I’ve seen up to four alligators on a single fairway behind my house.
Houston area golf courses water hazards are strong on the hazard.
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_bk_l2000_0014.pdf
Mo money, mo money, mo money...
Not all government jobs are equal. Many years ago I had a job as a Wisconsin Game Warden. We were required to work weeks as long as 100 hours, and get paid for at most 56 hours. The extra 16 hour over 40 were straight hours, not overtime. At least one of the Wardens complained to me about that. He said that he would rather have had the money go into the vehicle fund so that he could patrol more. I believe the system has changed since then, and the abuses have been moderated.
* April 2, Zapata County Game Warden Jake Cawthon and Brooks County Game Warden Royce Ilse were requested to assist Zapata County Sheriff’s Department, Border Patrol and the Texas Rangers in the search of a residence in Zapata.
Wardens Cawthon and Ilse assisted by providing cover and entry into the house where three members of the Mexican drug gang, Zetas, were found.
The three Zeta members later admitted to investigators they were in Zapata to kidnap and kill an individual.
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