I can't imagine what the farmer who went to check on his grain thought a week or so ago and found a 14 foot-long alligator basking in the warm air that was coming from the exhaust of the bin.

Jamin Simmons of Mattamuskeet Ventures thinks that the massive reptile was simply getting warm after the recent cool spell we've been having. The grain bin was set alongside one of the access canals that border the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway in Hyde County and this particular gator had been observed hanging out in the vicinity for the last six years.

I don't think that the farmers in the area realized just how big it was until the gator decided that the grain bin was offering a ready-made sauna alongside its swimming hole.

Game wardens, biologists and onlookers gathered around as volunteers used a 12 foot-long pole to carefully slip a heavy rope over the animal's head.

Keeping a safe distance from the gators tail end and gaping jaws, the officials led the animal out into the open, shot a few photographs and then let the gator go into the water. Apparently the sauna idea didn't set too well with the farmers.

Simmons estimates that the alligator was about two feet longer than the pole that was used to attach the rope to its neck. That makes the alligators estimated length at about 14 feet, a real big one in anybody's book.

Even though nobody offered to actually weigh the alligator some who witnessed its removal from the grain bin area estimated that it weighed 700 to 800 pounds.

Sportsmen who go bullfrog gigging at night on the numerous canals that crisscross Hyde and Dare counties report that they see a lot of large and small alligators in the canals. They're seldom observed during the daylight hours but at night their eyes shine out vividly when the spotlight hits them.

Alligators are also reported in Lake Mattamuskeet and several have been hit by cars as they cross the N.C. Highway 94 causeway across the lake. The largest American Alligator on record was taken in Louisiana years ago and measured 19 feet, two inches in length. In this case the weight was estimated to be 1,000 pounds.

The largest population of alligators in North Carolina probably resides in Lake Ellis Simon at Camp Bryan near Havelock. Biologists have studied this shallow lake and its alligators for years now and agree that this is the place to be for big gators.

Members of this well-known hunting and fishing camp had their pet gator named "Spot." Fishermen observed this huge gator that they estimated to be 14-15 feet long for years. Reportedly it measured four feet across the back.

The biologists who were studying the alligators of Lake Ellis Simon reportedly had a rope on "Spot" one night but after they realized that "Spot" was longer than their 14-foot boat, they wisely decided to not take exact measurements at that time. One spring a few years ago, "Spot" failed to reappear on his favorite basking spot and he's never been seen since then. It's felt that he either died of old age or crawled through the nearby swamps to find another place to sun himself.

I've talked with a lot of newcomers North Carolina who don't realize that our state has a pretty good population of alligators. Not only do we have alligators along the coast, they're beginning to move west into what some consider to be the Piedmont region of the state. They could be moving their range north into eastern Virginia.

Years ago archers illegally shot and killed a small alligator in Jordan Lake near Durham. It remains a mystery as to how it got there.

That gator encounter looks small compared to the eight-footer that was captured in a farm pond near Fuquay-Varina last year. Its capture and release was well recorded and shown over the Internet and on local news channels. No one has any idea how that alligator got there either but it isn't out of the realm of possibility that it could have migrated there from the large alligator population of Brunswick County near Wilmington.

Supposedly the range of the American alligator stops at the northern edge of the Great Dismal Swamp but reports are that these animals now range above that. Warmer weather could be having an effect on the range of the alligators. The recent droughts that have been happening in North Carolina could also be forcing the alligators to seek new homes that meet their requirements for wet habitats.

Although the American alligator is supposedly restricted to fresh water it's not unusual to find them in our coastal estuaries and they are even known to venture into the ocean at times.

In the late 1950s Pamlico and Beaufort counties had healthy populations of alligators. Smith Creek between Campbell's Creek and Hobucken had a good population of alligator nest during the summer and youngsters used to brave the wrath of the mother gator and steal the youngsters from the nest. They were a popular trading item among us kids at Aurora High School in those years. I kept several in a small fish pool behind our house and they eventually escaped into the South Creek drainage I'm sure. There are reports of seeing gators in that area again.

I've often wondered if alligators might be partially responsible for the disappearance of hunter's dogs in the eastern part of North Carolina. In states such as Florida or Louisiana where gators are plentiful, they're notorious for eating dogs (and cats) that venture too close to the water's edge.

American alligators are protected in North Carolina and their numbers seem to be increasing along with their range.

Sport fishermen and commercial fishermen, sick of seeing large numbers of longnose gar entangled in their nets and cutting into the populations of more desirable fish, feel that the alligators help to keep the gar population under control. If the alligator's population continues to grow, maybe North Carolina will remove them from the protected list (as Louisiana already has) and open a hunting season on alligators.