Florida Bans Unnaturally Posed Stuffed Baby Crocodilians

Sometimes I start one of these things but then, for a variety of reasons, don’t finish it. Maybe something better came up, maybe the research was taking longer than expected, or maybe a shiny object distracted me. But I usually don’t delete the draft because hey, maybe one day I’ll go back and finish it. So there they sit in the draft folder. Over time I’ve accumulated a few of these, and by “a few” I mean 417.

I’m now going back to finish one I started in 2015.

Back then, I had just learned that Florida had amended its fish-and-wildlife regulations to prohibit the sale of “any crocodilian product manufactured in the form of a stuffed baby crocodilian less than three feet in length … that depicts an unnatural crocodilian body or body part positioning.” Fla. Admin. Code, Rule 68A-25.002(2)(c) (2014). So you can see why I was excited.

In the original draft, I wrote, “I apologize for not bringing this to your attention sooner,” and I do even more so today. But it is also still true that Florida has this in its Administrative Code, so it’s not like this is irrelevant now.

Confusingly, “crocodilian product” is not limited to “product made from a crocodile,” as you might think. As I mentioned back in 2012, Florida seems to use “crocodilian” to mean any animal in the order Crocodilia, which includes alligators, caimans, and gharials in addition to crocodiles themselves. See “Man Who Lost Hand to Gator Is Charged With Unlawful Feeding” (Aug. 1, 2012) (alligator); see also Fla. Stat. § 379.409 (making it unlawful to kill “an alligator or other crocodilian” except as permitted by rule). It doesn’t include bears, despite some confusing language in other statutes. See, e.g., Fla. Stat. § 379.412 (increasing penalties for feeding wildlife if all violations relate to “bears or alligators or other crocodilians”). But it does include the non-crocodile crocodilians, so please make a note of that.

Again, I apologize to those of you who incurred stuffed-crocodilian-posing fines you might have avoided if I’d brought this up earlier.

It’s a little puzzling as to why this rule was considered necessary in the first place, because at the time it was illegal to sell any “alligator product manufactured in the form of a stuffed baby … crocodilian,” no matter how it was posed. Or at least that’s what I wrote in 2015, but that statute has apparently been repealed. So while a specific unnatural-posing rule would not be redundant now, the question remains why this was (and apparently still is) considered necessary at all.

The answer seems to be that, by 2014, the market for stuffed baby alligators that appeared to be waving had gone through the roof. “Looking for a nice stuffed baby alligator posed so it looks like it’s waving hello for your living room or bedside table?” asked the Miami New Times. “Better act fast.” Citing the the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, that article said the point was to “shut down the tacky tourist trade that encourages baby alligators to be killed off and turned into trinkets,” using an odd turn of phrase making it sound like the baby alligators were in favor of that. Someone was killing them, anyway, and presumably there was evidence this was being done for the purpose of selling their happily waving corpses to tourists. Making such sales illegal, the FWCC reasoned, would help prevent baby-crocodilian murders.

To further that goal, it appears, the regulation goes further than just the standing-and-waving pose that was apparently so beguiling to tourists. Much further. Selling any stuffed baby crocodilian in a way that “depicts an unnatural crocodilian body or body part positioning” is a violation. While that would certainly include standing upright and waving, the mind boggles as to what else might be forbidden. The regulations certainly don’t define “unnatural crocodilian position” or even suggest how to make that determination. That suggests this regulation could be extremely broad.

The head of the state’s Alligator Management Program appeared to confirm that when the New Times asked him this very question. An unnatural position, he said, would be “anything that an alligator can’t or won’t do.” So, anything of which an alligator would be physically incapable or would be subjectively unwilling to do, got it. Although that second category might pose some very difficult questions in practice.

At this point, my 2015 draft broke off after the heading: “PROHIBITED BABY CROCODILIAN POSES,” which suggests I planned to create a list of poses that would be illegal under this regulation but then ran out of steam. So here are at least a few of the things your stuffed baby crocodilian should not appear to be doing: