From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, 8/31/1935, p. 1, c. 2

Catfish Angler Pulls Alligator From Murky James River Canal
By John Daffron

What with ghosts turning out to be opossums; deadly black widow spiders being caught by the dozens in Henrico and Chesterfield Counties and Hearst indorsing Al Smith for president, George W. Martin of 1821 Winder Street added to the general confusion yesterday afternoon by catching an alligator in the James River Canal near the pumphouse.

But alligators are only found in tropic waters, Mr. Martin was informed as he lugged a large wooden pail into the The Times-Dispatch last night. Besides you don’t catch alligators with a hook and line, you wrestle with them, he was further in formed by several who had read books.

“Well, I caught this one in the canal and I used a hook and line,” he retorted, and to prove his fact dumped on junior alligator, small and lively, on the floor, and scouted doubts and frightened the phone girl, who screamed slightly and departed.

Martin, who is 45 “and fished in the canal for 20 years,” said he never saw anything like it come out of the canal before. “Plenty of catfish but this is the first one of these things I ever hooked.”

Snaring of the alligator (el lagarto de Indias) brought a rather abrupt end to a catfishing expedition, members of which included Martin, Joe Denton and wife, and Lew Denton, father of Joe, and his wife.

Feminine Element Not Pleased

“I got a grown one,” said Martin as something snagged his hook. He pulled the thing up, he said, and there as here, the feminine element was not pleased.

After the alligator (species mississippiensis; found, they say only in far Southern water) crawled around the office for awhile and was photographed, Martin plopped him back into the pail, preparatory to departing.

“I guess I’ll sell him,” he replied to a query as to el lagarto’s future, “You wouldn’t want to buy him, would you?”

We said we wouldn’t.

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