What do you call a financially wise alligator? An investi-gator! What do you call an alligator at First National Bank of Alvin? Lucy!
Lucy is the lone alligator at First National Bank of Alvin, otherwise known as the “Gator Bank,” located about 30 miles south of Houston. For more than half a century, the bank has housed alligators in what Scotty Van Dusen calls “the alligatrium.”
Van Dusen, the bank’s head of maintenance, started his role at the bank about six months ago. He retired from working on skyrises in downtown Houston as an engineer, but he quickly grew bored of retirement and decided to work at his local bank.
While it has been a smooth transition from engineer to maintenance for him, handling Lucy has been his biggest challenge.
Van Dusen begins, “She is not like a puppy-dog or a kitty-cat, she’s not affectionate at all. She wants to eat and sleep, and that’s it. Don’t bother her!”
Lucy is in her teenage stage, 13 going on 14 years old. She’s currently in hibernation with the weather becoming colder and is expected to come back out in March when the temperatures warm up. Like a teenager busting out of their bedroom hibernation, Van Dusen said Lucy will come out of her cave starving and aggressive when hibernation is over.
She eats about six to eight boneless chicken breasts every two days, given on a four-foot-long stick. Van Dusen said that’s about as close as he wants to get to her since she’s a “sneaky” gal.
Her tactics include sneaking up on Van Dusen when he’s pulling weeds or fixing the garden he maintains nicely for her that she occasionally tears up. Lucy even sneaks up on Van Dusen with a frightening hiss. “She hisses like a cat! I’ve never heard anything like that before and it scares the daylights out of me. A cat hiss is like a whisper compared to hers, she’ll really scare you!”
Van Dusen grew up with turtles and snakes, but never anything like handling an alligator. He laughs, “I wouldn’t call it being an alligator handler because I don’t handle her at all! I’m just her caretaker.”
Luckily, Van Dusen wasn’t thrown into the gator caretaking business without some help. The previous head of maintenance and former caretaker of Lucy, Troy Stuart, showed Van Dusen the ropes. Van Dusen said he did some research himself to better understand the gator caretaking process, and if he ever runs into a question, he’s in close contact with the owner of Crocodile Encounter in Anglewood.
It seems Lucy is the one running things around the bank. After all, she is the bank’s biggest attraction, coming in at roughly seven feet long. She’s adored by the bank’s customers who bring in alligator trinkets from around the world to display throughout the facility. From big to small gator knickknacks, to gator stuffed animals and even gator snow globes, the bank is filled with alligators everywhere you turn.
The bank accidentally started the gator tradition in 1969 when a farmer donated three six-inch gator hatchlings to live in what was previously a goldfish pond inside the bank’s atrium. Once the gators were in, the goldfish were out, but not by choice. Since then, the bank became branded as the Gator Bank — with its logo including a gator.
Customers and bankers alike enjoy the gators so much, the bank will continue the tradition of housing a gator or two from a nearby gator farm.