Animal Planet’s “Gator Boys💞,” one of the network’🅠s most popular shows, wraps up its summer season Sunday night.
On the show,🐭 licensed alligator trappers Paul Bedard and Jimmy Riffle deal with the dangerous beasts, usually in the Florida Everglades (last season’s episodes took place in Mississippi).
The Post sat down with Bedard and Riffle, on a recent trip to New York, to ask the colorful pair some questions about their very unusual li🥀ne of work.
Q: Do you have to be licensed to do what you do?
Paul: Absolutely.
Q: So the average person can’t go out and catch a gator?
Paul: If you want to go to jail, you can do it.
Jimmy: Even in another area. If a call went to an area [the gator-c♊atc🌜her] is not licensed in — and he went and tried to catch that gator — he could get arrested.
Q: At what age did you catch your first gator?
Jimmy: I actually started catching alligators and wrestling when I was 11-yearsꦏ-old and it escalated from there..
Q: But at 11, you weren’t catching nuisance gators. It was just for fun, right?
Jimmy: No, I actually worked for the Seminole Tribe of Florida at a place🧔 called the Native Village and I went and caught wild alligators with people on the reservation. But I also did alligator wrestling for entertainment and educational purposes. Native Village is a small educational zoo in Hollywood, Fla. We do school groups, birthday parties, adult parties, but mainly it’s summer groups and kid birthday parties. When we started catching gators, it wasn’t for the Florida Wildlife Commission, it was for the Seminole Tribe of F𒈔lorida.
Paul: I got into it later with a guy named Kevin Garvey, who’s the main trapper in Broward County. I was buying gators off of him for the wrestling show so they wouldn’t be harvested because I♔ didn’t want to see them killed. And he said if you really want to save gators, you should become an agent for me. So I started catching gators with him and then Jimmy and I teamed back up and started doing it.
Q: This season you’re back home in Florida.
Paul: Very happy to be back in Florida. For me especially. I think [Jimmy] enjoyed Mississippi more than I did. The mud and stuff was a challenge for both of us, but for me, the dirty water was just killing me. It would take us twice as long to film an episode because they wanted th🔯at in-the-water shot and we’d go on 10 catches in a row and you couldn’t see anything.
Q: Biggest gator you ever caught?
Jimmy: It was in Mississippi.
Paul: 13 1/2 [feet] and that was a wild gator.
Q: Have you been bitten a lot?
Paul: I have, yes. I’ve probably been 💮bitten more than anybody I know.
Jimmy: He could be in Guinness Book of World Records.
Paul: Definitely for head bites. I’ve been bitten in the head five times. It’s always during alligator wrestling shows and I’d say it’s a safe bet I’ve done more head tricks than anybody probably ever in wrestling because I used to do 15-to-20 wrestling shows a day and 🥃. . . I had to do the head trick at every show. I feel like I’m cheating them if I don’t do it. Now I don’t do that as much.
It’s miraculous I’m not dead. I’ve seen two other guys get bit in the head and the gator spikes him and holds him down and three guys have to come over with crowbars and stuff to pry the gator’s༒ mouth open. They bite me, hang on for two seconds, and spit me out.
Q: I’m assuming the head bites are the worst bites you’ve ever had?
Paul: No. Because they spit me out so quick. I had a 12-footer take a chunk out of my arm. [Jimmy] actuallyꦦ stitched it up, pu🤪t maybe 15 stitches in it.
Q: And your worst bite, Jimmy?
Jimmy: I was 18 years old and was doing a show at the Native Village for about 90 people for a baby shower and I had a 9-foot alligator named Hollywood bite me in my right thumb and he held on for about 8 minutes. He wouldn’t let go. My mentor, growing up, Skeet [Johns], luckily jum👍ped in . . . and if he wasn’t there, I would have lost my thumb.
I’ve been bitten seven times total.