Fabled giant alligator ‘Two-Toed Tom’ has his place in local folklore

World record Stokes Alligator in Wilcox County, Ala.

Harper Lee’s 2015 novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” is one of my favorite books. The novel, very much like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is full of thinly-veiled references to numerous people and places in Monroe County. I read a little bit of each book every day and enjoy picking out the nods to real-life things that would be lost on the typical reader outside of our area.

One of my favorite scenes in “Go Set a Watchman” comes early in the book as 26-year-old Jean Louise “Scout” Finch and her childhood sweetheart Henry “Hank” Clinton are driving at night towards the Alabama River. They are about 10 miles from the river when Jean Louise says she can “feel the river already.” Henry, who is driving, picks at her, saying that she must be “half alligator.”

Jean Louis jokingly asks if “Two-Toed Tom” is still around, and Hank remarks that they “might see him tonight.”

As they motor along towards the river, Jean Louis remembers that “Two-Toed Tom lived wherever there was a river. He was a genius: he made tunnels beneath Maycomb and ate people’s chickens at night; he was once tracked from Demopolis to Tensas. He was as old as Maycomb County.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the legendary Two-Toed Tom, he was said to be a giant alligator that got into all sorts of misadventures in the rivers and swamps of Alabama and Florida. His name comes from a tale in which he lost all but two of his toes in a steel trap.

One of the best sources regarding Two-Toed Tom is Carl Carmer’s book, “Stars Fell on Alabama.” This book was published on June 26, 1934 – which was about two months before the fictional Scout, Jem and Dill almost get caught trying to sneak to the Radley place at night in a failed attempt to give a letter to Boo Radley. Carmer’s book details his travels throughout Alabama and includes details about local myths and legends like Two-Toed Tom.

In Carmer’s story about Two-Toed Tom, he describes this monster reptile as a “red-eyed, 14-foot alligator who would regularly eat farmers livestock as well as men and women. The story continues to tell of multiple failed attempts to kill the alligator, including an ex-military sharpshooter who spent over a week in a hunting blind, waiting for the creature, and another incident where the alligator was chased into a pond by farmer Pap Haines, into which 15 syrup buckets of dynamite were lit and thrown into, in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Two-Toe.”

If this description is to be taken at face value, it’s worth noting that there are larger alligators in the Alabama River. The world record Stokes Alligator, which was killed in August 2014 in Wilcox County, was 15 feet, nine inches long and weighed 1,011.5 pounds. More than likely over the years there have been other “monster” gators that were just as big – or almost just as big – as the Stokes Alligator and “Two-Toed Tom.”