The alligator roping story is based on the true life experiences of Rob McDonnell, world champion bull rider 1977, his sidekick Marilyn Runions, and their dear friend Clint Clark, champion calf roper, as told to the author by Ms. Runions. The events took place on the famous Roy Carver Ranch in Crockett, Texas. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.
We were cooling off on the front porch of the bunkhouse with a Crown Reserve on ice after a hard day of riding and roping when we saw the Asian potbelly pig walking down the road, but we had no idea it could possibly, that very day, lead to the only alligator roping, as far as I know, in the long history of East Texas.
I said to Bob my life-partner, former World Champion Bull Rider (‘77), and Pendleton Roundup Champion (‘84), “Bob, here comes that dang pet pig again to steal our grain.” Bob looked down the road but didn’t budge. He’d seen it all in his time as a cowboy, rancher, bull rider and roughneck in the East, Texas oil patch. After years of riding wild bulls, you don’t get excited very easily. Our best friend, Johnny Clarkson, who was just as famous as a calf roper on the IPRA circuit in those days, was visiting from Houston, and says, “What pet pig?”
I didn’t normally like calf ropers at all because they were too rough on their horses when they trained them for calf roping. But I loved Johnny Clarkson (maybe just a little too much) because he was the most soft-hearted cowboy I’d ever met. White-tail deer in Texas grow up dodging bullets from hunters. Shooting deer in Texas is like swatting flies in Arkansas. So every deer in the county wanted to live on Johnny’s property because he would not allow hunters on his place to shoot at ’em. He hated killing animals, just like I did.
I explained to Johnny, “Little Porky the Pig shows up now and again and eats our grain then waddles back up the road to the neighbor’s place where he is treated like one of the kids.” Johnny turned and looked up the long drive toward the highway and sure enough here comes the funniest looking, fattest, short legged little miniature pig you’ve ever seen. He laughed and took off his hat and slapped his leg and dust flew up around the ice bowl. I tried to wave the dust away with my hat.
“Well,” Bob says, “we know what to do.” He got up and went inside and came back out with an old 16-gauge shotgun and a box of Remington shells. Johnny couldn’t believe his eyes and says, “Damn, Champ! What on earth are you fixin’ to do?” I laughed and explained that our neighbor, feeling guilty about his kid’s pet pig eating our grain, had brought over some special shells for just such an occasion. The shells were filled with salt. You could scare cows or dogs into doing what you wanted by shooting them in the rear-end like a good spanking. Johnny laughed and said, “Oh, okay.”
Bob took out a shell and put it in the shotgun and locked and loaded and sat back down. I noticed Bob was massaging the thumb he’d broke years earlier on Gerald Smith’s #122. (That’s the number of the bull). That thumb hurt like the dickens during eighteen rides.
We waited until Porky the Pig, that was his name, stopped at the barn and started eating some grain that had dropped on the ground from feeding forty horses every morning. Bob raised the shotgun, took careful aim, we clinched our teeth, waited, then he pulled the trigger and that 16-gauge shook the whole front porch, spewed smoke like a canon at the Alamo. Porky Pig was way more than spanked. Maybe it was the Crown Reserve, or maybe it was the wackie-tobackie that me and Bob often enjoyed of an evening, but somehow, he had picked up the wrong box of shells. It wasn’t salt at all!
Johnny screamed like he had been shot himself at the sight of what happened to that pig and screamed, “Damn champ! You done killed that little pig!”
It was true. Bob McCormack, my true love, who also wouldn’t hurt a flea, the 1974 Bull Riding World Champion had blown little Porky Pig to the big slop trough in the sky. We grabbed our refreshments and hustled out to the scene of the crime for an inspection.
John Tarver, our boss, the owner of the JT Bucking Bull and Cutting Horse Ranch near Crockett, Texas, was due home at any moment. John was sort of obsessed about being the boss. He ran a real tight ship. If he sees this story even to this day he’ll never forgive us. There was only one thing to do. Get rid of the remains and do it real quick. I got the chuck wagon, then refreshed my drink while the boys picked up Porky piece by piece and we headed for the bull pond in the south pasture where we planned to set Porky afloat and allow the lone alligator in all East, Texas to deal with the situation. Bob then explained to Johnny how and why an alligator lived in the bull pond in the south pasture. And how it grew bigger every year. He’d actually jumped out of the water and snapped at a calf on more than one occasion. John Tarver had strongly suggested, more like a direct order, that we get rid of the alligator, but cowboys don’t have any experience in disposing of a fourteen foot, eight-hundred pound alligator. Cowboys are notorious for inaction when they are dumbfounded by a situation. We kept puttin’ it off year after year.
Bob stayed behind to tidy up the crime scene. Me and Johnny rode the golf-cart wagon the quarter of a mile to the pond, pulled Porky out of the wagon one piece at a time, and tossed him gently into the water. Then Johnny removed his Stetson, gently took my hand in his and stepped back, never taking his eyes off the edge of the water. “Lord in heaven,” he began, but I could tell he had one eye open.
Proud and relieved that we had taken care of this unusual situation, we drove the little golf cart sized chuck wagon back to the bunkhouse, refreshed our drinks, sat back and told our favorite stories to each other, again. Cowboys live a strange life and rodeo cowboys even more strange filled with adventures, travels, injuries, new cities and towns, always new and interesting people along with bull rides, bronc rides and calf roping. Cowboys lend each other their personal gear, ropes, saddles, blankets, spurs and even horses, anything to help a friend win a contest, even when they are competing head-on against each other. It’s just “the cowboy way” and it bonds us all together in love, pain, loss, heartache and laughter. We laughed for a while and decided to take a nap before the cocktail hour.
I suddenly got the idea that I should go back to the bull pond and make sure the alligator had done his duty and made Porky disappear. I pulled up to the edge of the pond in the chuck wagon. And, to my horror, out in the middle of the pond was a floating pig. I immediately CB radioed the bunkhouse and informed the cowboys that Porky looked like a big log with a little pig tail sticking straight up out in the middle of the pond. Within minutes one of America’s top calf ropers and the 1974 Bull Riding World Champion came a running. Johnny was riding a famous calf roping horse, owned by Bob as a matter of fact, named “Shake, Rattle ‘n Roll.” He was giving him the over and under, whipping the reins back and forth over his neck like kids do riding a broom through the house. Bob followed in Johnny’s pickup.
And that is what led to the only alligator roping, that I know of, in all of East, Texas history. After pondering the situation I said, “Johnny, ride out a little ways, rope the pig by the tail and pull it in so I can get ahold of it.”
“Ride out a little ways!?! Ride what? A tank? There’s an alligator in there and he ain’t taking a bite out of me or Shake.” Bob had the foresight to bring refreshments in the truck. So we refreshed our drinks, added some ice and stared out at Porky while scanning the surface of the dark green water. Cowboys don’t talk a lot when they’re challenged with a situation totally outside of their world and expertise as cowboys. Johnny spit on the ground. Bob placed his boot on the bumper of the pickup and placed the Crown on the hood but nobody said a word. “Look boys, John is due home soon. We can’t be down here standing around afraid to go after a dead pig because we can’t get rid of the alligator. We might get fired and have to go back to work.” It was that phrase, “back to work” that got their full attention.
Johnny finally agreed to mount Shake, ride out knee deep and try to lasso the pig. Shake was a smallish bay quarter horse. I admit he wasn’t the prettiest horse in the pageant but he had won calf roping national championships, and was one of the best horses I’ve ever known. That horse had heart. And smart? Are you kidding me? That’s why we loved ’em more than welding oil pipes. He knew damn well that alligator was in that bull pond. But Shake-Rattle ‘n Roll was a true champion. He sloshed right out into that dark algae covered water. Johnny got his lariat and twirled it around his head and tossed it toward the pig…and missed, and missed, and missed and missed. I started laughing, “Johnny, hon, I thought you was a champion calf roper?” He yelled back, “That ain’t no damn calf! That is a floatin’ pig! My rope is floating on top of the water.” He tried again and sure enough on the next toss he caught it. The rope snapped tight, I mean real tight like he’d caught a tree stump. He started pulling while Shake instinctively started to back up. That’s when we saw the teeth…big teeth. He’d roped that damned alligator! I screamed and Bob grabbed the Crown Reserve and jumped up in the back of the pickup and yelled, “Bring him in cowboy! Yeee-iiiii!” Johnny wasn’t laughing at all and old Shake was backing as fast as he could slosh through the mud and floating moss. He kept pulling and that’s when the gator decided to go in the other direction and Lord have mercy you should have seen that battle. Water was flying up and Shake was snorting and sliding in the mud and I was screaming and Bob was pouring. After a short while that seemed much longer like when you’re in church, Johnny pulled that big black moss covered monster right up on the bank. Shake didn’t stop. Once he started competing he knew what it meant to win. He pulled backwards and Johnny dallied his rope (wrapped the rope around the saddle horn) and headed backwards for the nearest tree dragging the alligator with the rope snared around his upper snout with both rows of teeth showing. Shake knew exactly what to do. He started circling the tree. The alligator finally lodged against the tree and Shake and Johnny were going round and round tying the alligator to the tree. Maybe it was the beverages, or maybe it was the wackie-tobackie, but Johnny, whether it was a calf or a wild alligator, went into automatic calf roping procedure. He swung his right leg back and high over Shake’s rump, while at the same time instantly pulling his left foot out of the stirrup, hanging on to the saddle horn, then landed square on the ground with his tie rope already between his teeth. He ran over to the alligator, grabbed the two back legs and whipped the rope around three times, looped, hitched and pulled, then threw his hands in the air and yelled, “Time!”
He was receiving a standing ovation from the sellout crowd who were screaming with busted gut laughter standing safely in the bed of the pickup. That’s when I heard the truck way up by the front gate. I turned to look and to my utter horror I saw John Tarver’s red truck pull into the driveway and drive slowly toward the main ranch house.
I can’t be real sure what happened next. They tell me that Johnny remounted, roped the pig and pulled it in and the boys loaded it into the back of the pickup. They untied the alligator and raced each other back to the truck laughing all the way. Bob drove the chuck wagon back to the bunkhouse. I remember mounting Shake, Rattle ‘n Roll and riding back to the barn. Johnny drove his pickup through the pasture and up to the driveway, turned left toward the highway on his way home to Houston, and yelled, ”See ya’ later alligator!”
I gave Shake a little extra feed that night. About midnight the phone rang. I answered still half asleep from the day’s excitement. It was Johnny. He had just arrived in Houston but, maybe it was the Crown Royal, or maybe, well, you know, he’d driven all the way to downtown Houston but somehow forgot poor old dead Porky was in the back of his truck. There was only one thing to do. He decided to drive thru a carwash and pretend he was washing his truck. But when he drove out of the bay the truck was still covered with Texas red dirt and Porky The Pig was never heard from again.
That was many years ago. Shake grew very old and finally, sadly, had to be turned out to the great eternal pasture in the sky. My own Bob, too, has since gone on to the big final rodeo. I haven’t talked to Johnny since Bob’s funeral. I think I’m going to call him tonight. Me? I’m doing real good. I’ve got a job as housekeeper, cook and live-in-care-attendant for aging Arkansas writer and storyteller, Grady Jim Robinson. We have been known on occasion to stay up late tending an adult refreshment telling our favorite stories. John Tarver still runs the ranch in Crockett, Texas. If he ever gets wind of this story I’ll swear on a case of Crown Royal Special Reserve that me and Bob and Johnny and Shake, Rattle ‘n Roll never once accidently killed a neighbor’s pet pig, roped an alligator, and tied it to tree. Never once… that I can recall.
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Grady Jim Robinson grew up in Greenwood, Arkansas and graduated from high school in 1963. His stories about growing up in Arkansas first appeared in Sports Illustrated beginning in 1979. His first SI story, “The Diving Contest” published in June 1979, was also published in Reader’s Digest in October 1979 and later in dozens of smaller magazines. He has published four books including Stories and Poems from the Water Bucket published in January 2025. Robinson developed many of his stories as a youth minister in Tulsa and Memphis, then in the world of nightclub comedy and, finally, during thirty years as a professional motivational speaker for corporations across America. In 1994, he was inducted into the National Speaker’s Hall of Fame. He lives in Beverly, Massachusetts where he continues to create stories and poems.
