Big Beau has never chomped a car, as far as anybody knows, but his fearsome jaws are always open wide next to Interstate 10 about 15 miles southwest of his namesake city, Beaumont.
The enormous metal alligator boasts a 135-foot-long body and an upper jaw soaring 21 feet above Gator Country Adventure Park & Sanctuary, a 15-acre property that’s home to about 650 alligators—not to mention snakes, tortoises, and other critters, most of them rescued or relocated following wildlife nuisance complaints.
Gator Country owner Gary Saurage came up with the idea for Big Beau in 2012 to catch the attention of kids riding in the backseat as their parents drove along I-10.
I’m gonna see the green alligator! he imagined kids saying. Are we to the green alligator yet?
He had the vision, but not the budget to match it. So he had to get creative. To frame out the body, a nearby plant nursery owner gave Saurage several old hoop-style greenhouses in exchange for taking them down and clearing the property. Treated lumber wrapped in green metal sheeting completed the body.
“Then I thought, How in the world am I gonna do the mouth?” Saurage recalls. “And it just kind of came to me.”
He built the upper jaw from metal tubing and sheet metal. It’s essentially a giant pitched rectangle lined with sharp white teeth cut from plywood. The eyes are old tires.
At the time, Saurage was riding a new wave of celebrity following his starring role in the CMT reality series Gator 911. He asked for help on Facebook, and dozens of strangers came out to help him make Big Beau a reality. Local tourism officials pitched in as well. All told, the project took about eight months.
“It may have been my idea, but the entire community really helped me,” Saurage says. “It was a big group effort.”
The green monster is charmingly DIY, but it’s sturdy enough to have survived a couple of hurricanes. (Although Saurage still needs to replace the Big Beau sign after a recent storm blew it down.)
Before he became a gator wrangler, Saurage served in the Air Force and spent nearly two decades in law enforcement. One night, while guiding a hunt on a Southeast Texas ranch, he watched a large alligator catch and drag off a newborn calf. The rancher asked him to get rid of the gator, and Saurage’s next career was born. He began catching nuisance alligators from pools, ponds, and backyards, and guided alligator hunts for a while before deciding he’d rather give them a place to call home.
Saurage found an abandoned 15-acre alligator farm and transformed it into Gator Country, opening it in 2006 with 21 alligators. Gator 911 followed in 2010, along with appearances on Lone Star Law, River Monsters, and Billy the Exterminator. His most recent streaming series, Texas Gator Savers, wrapped up last year.
Big Beau has gargantuan, real-life reptilian company at Gator Country.
The park is home to Big Al—a nearly century-old alligator measuring 13 feet, 4 inches—that held the title for Texas’ largest alligator in captivity until Big Tex arrived.
Big Tex is 14 feet, 1 inch long, weighs about 1,200 pounds, and is believed to be the largest alligator in captivity in the United States. Saurage captured Big Tex in 2016 after he became a little too friendly with people at the Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge, about 45 miles west of Gator Country. He lured the alligator closer with pieces of raw chicken, then lassoed him and used a truck to pull him from the water.
If Big Tex is Gator Country’s biggest resident, Big Beau remains its most recognizable ambassador.
Usually, Saurage notices drivers pulling onto the Interstate 10 feeder road to pose for photographs with the giant alligator. That has slowed during the past couple of years because of highway construction. When the project is complete, however, Big Beau will have an even better perch. A new overpass will give passing motorists a front-row view of the metal monster.
“When they’re on top of the overpass, they’re going to be looking right at it,” Saurage says. “I’m talking, you could throw a rock and hit it.”
