Tyler Morning Telegraph from Tyler, Texas • 18

Tyler Morning Telegraph MONDAY. JUNE 13. 1988 S2 WHAT A GUY! TflHpff Wsir Fr IF1 cJS "THANK YOU, GUY. yyNcR 06UALLY ij) jctHf f7 PONT RECITE THE GARFIELD I I WA6 II MY DIRTHRAV 13 AoXl'CK fe-il LUANN Vmc! MyrAlfe f'cuzj didnY i Wow wc ai rw a Jp' I WMnnnZnnnnninnBnnn3 belly skin and the bland-tasting meat. But the fact is, the odds of getting attacked by a gator in Florida are about the same as getting struck by lightning, game officials say.

The latest death marks the sixth documented gator killing along with 95 unprovoked attacks in Florida since 1948, according to game commission statistics. "These are the consequences we face as a growing state where people choose to crowd their houses onto the alligator's native habitat," said Bernie Yokel of the Florida Audubon Society in Maitland. "We sometimes forget the gator was here first." Biologists estimate there are anywhere from 1 million to 6 million gators in Florida, nesting in swamps and marshes and even winding their way through drainage tunnels into freshwater pockets of sprawling urban areas. In September, the state will lift a 1962 hunting ban and open a tightly controlled month-long season with a strict kill limit of 3,000 gators, a number not expected to make a dent in the huge population. But homeowner Santiago says he still feels a cold shiver of fear whenever he hears the gator's low bellow in the night.

Santjugo has forbidden his nine young grandchildren from playing near the water when they visit; he has ordered a chain-link fence built around his home and he has called on game officials to remove his problem gator. "I couldn't live with myself," he said, "if anything happened to one of my grandchildren." MIAMI (API William Santiago used to sit back and chuckle when an alligator ventured onto the lawn of his lakefront home, but now he says he'll blast any gator foolish enough to crawl within pistol range. For Santiago and other waterfront residents in Florida, the alligator's image has changed dramatically from an amusing visitor to a deadly menace a change prompted by the recent fatal alligator attack on a 4-year-old girl in the Gulf Coast community of Englewood. Erin Glover was walking a dog with two playmates in the ankle-deep water of a pond June 4 when a lO'i foot long bull gator lunged from the water and snapped the child in its jaws, dragging her underwater to her death. For Santiago, the turf war between man and beast heats up whenever he broils a couple of steaks on his charcoal grill in the.

Dade County neighborhood, wafting an aroma that one 6-foot "neighborhood" gator finds irresistible. "He crawls up the bank right into our back yard and sits there with his back arched just staring," said Santiago, a 67-year-old Cuban exile who moved in last year. "The last time I went and got my gun, but he saw me coming and ran away." "We're seeing a lot of panic out there," said Lt. Dick Lawrence of the Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission. In the week following Erin's death, game officials in the state's five regional offices were swamped with 849 complaints from residents wanting alligators removed NE GET I ytUKT ABE NOJ DOING UP HERE.

snac'mt. lets TO STM UP LATE NE'CAN EAT Author ff To See Munchkins Minus The ellow IBrick Eo a mmto i mi- rwe vri i i-u WHtKt nr WfcWWBl! Vt it and I was thinking, 'Oh boy, I'm Munchkins think: A book on the that really going to sell?" Cox said. how popular they are." and women who played the Munqh-kins by two troupes of vaudeville by Leo Singer and Major Doyle. But never acted before and some were didn't speak English, Cox said. went on in show business, but most into other jobs, he said.

of St. Louis, now 69, continued acting returned home to the family business monuments. Parnell St. Aubin opened a called the Midget's Club and walked serving drinks. Meinhardt Raabe went on Oscar for Oscar Mayer lunchmeats appearances around the country.

proud of their parts in "The Wizard of "They're proud of being a part of one of pictures ever made. A new generation Wizard of Oz' every year." fond memories of working with Miss other stars, there were problems, Cox recalled heavy, elaborate costumes and Lewis Croft of Idaho Falls, Idaho, it smarted when the plastic look bald was ripped off like a piece of each day. heard a story about one Munchkin "The Count" and well-known for who visited the bathroom one day and into the toilet and being stuck there little people are telling tall tales," he of it's good for legends." ST. LOUIS (AP) Stephen Cox is off to see the Munchkins, the wonderful Munchkins of Oz. But he has no Yellow Brick Road to follow in his search for the little people who greeted Dorothy in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz." "It may not be easy to find some of them," said the writer.

"I know there are some still living, but they've sort of fallen into the woodwork." Cox is writing a book about the little people who sang and danced with the young Judy Garland in the musical based on L. Frank Baum's magical tale of good and bad witches, a bumbling wizard and Dorothy's lovable friends, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion. Cox's book, "Oz Remembered: Memoirs of the Munchkins," will be published by E.P. Dutton of New York and released next year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the MGM movie classic. "There are hundreds of thousands of people out there who are fascinated by the Munchkins," said Jeanne Martinet, a Dutton editor.

So far, Cox has located about 30 of the 124 people who played Munchkinland villagers and soldiers. He has spent days poring over telephone directories and making calls with not much to go on but old address books and faded sign-in sheets from long-ago lunches on the movie's set. "I figure it's about time to give them some credit," Cox said, adding that the movie credits gave them little mention. "All it said was 'The Singer Midgets as the Their scene lasts about 10 minutes, but I think it's the most enchanting part of the whole movie." For Margaret Pellegrini, being a Munchkin meant a chance to meet movie stars and other people of her size. She was 16 when the movie was made and is nearing 70 now, she said recently from her home in Glendale, Ariz.

"Meeting up with all the little people, because I hadn't been around vecy many little people it was just a great experience." "I didn't think it would be so popular. Of course, I about five times the normal load. "I try to calm them down but they won't take 'no' for an answer," said Lawrence, who supervises the nuisance-alligator program in 10 south Florida counties. "Some say if we don't come out there and destroy the gator in their neighborhood, they're going to do lt themselves," Game officials last week received a report that a hysterical woman living near the fatal attack "bashed a 3-foot gator's head in." "It made her feel a little bit better, but it didn't accomplish anything," said Lt. Jim Farrior of the game commisson, adding that alligators that small eat only minnows and frogs, not people.

About 80 percent of the complaints result in a permit issued to destroy the gator, said Lt. Mitchell Brown in Lakeland. Last year, 3,853 alligators were killed, he said. "Our main concerns are with a gator that's been fed," said Lt. Jim Huffstodt, a game commission spokesman in West Palm Beach.

"People think it's real cute to treat the gator like a pet and give it a name and toss it scraps of food and marshmallows. "Over time, the gator loses its fear of people and begins to associate people with food that's setting the stage for a tragedy," Huffstodt said. He added that any bold action toward humans, pets or livestock is enough to order a gator destroyed. That job is turned over to state-licensed trappers, a select group of experts allowed to kill alligators and profit from the armored under not say whether any of his centrist forces would be prepared to participate in a coalition with the Socialists. "Personally, I hope that the French get a government made up of the best," he said.

"I wonder if the time has not come for national union." Valery Giscard d'Estaing, former center-right president, said the results showed the French did not want one party to have all the power. "That is a good thing. They tried to say, 'we want the two halves of France to work he said Only 122 of the seats in the National Assembly, the most powerful house of Parliament, were filled in the first round of the election June 5. Sunday's runoffs were in the 453 districts where no candidate won a majority the first time. A first round of voting also was held for two seats from French Polynesia.

Voter turnout was estimated at 71 percent, according to the Interior Ministry. Since 1986, when the conservatives won control of the National Assembly, Mitterrand has been forced into an uncomfortable "cohabitation" with the right. Following his re-election last month with a 54 percent of the vote, Mitterrand dissolved the Assembly and called elections three years ear-. ly to win a majority. i In the first round, the two main conservative parties won 77 seats, the Socialists 40, the minor rightist parties four and the Communists one.

Pre-election polls predicted a large Socialist majority in the National Assembly, but the conservatives received more votes in round one. The Socialists and Communist" concluded a second-round agreement in which both parties supported the leading leftist candidate in each district and withdrew the was excited about going to "A lot of the Munchkins? Is "They don't realize Most of the men were recruited midgets headed many of them had from Europe and A few of them eventually settled Mickey Carroll for a time, then selling grave tavern in Chicago along the bar to portray Little and made promotional They're all Oz," Cox said. the best motion discovers 'The But for all the Garland and the said. Pellegrini layers of makeup. remembered how that made the men of tape at the end Cox said he has an actor nicknamed his drinking wound up falling for 45 minutes.

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"WEI ON WE CAN vacation: NATCH OKIES JUDGE PARKER DRIVEN ABBEY AND DAVID TO THE AIRPORT, SUSAN ACCOMPANIES THEM TO THE DEPARTURE GATE' va nvMicc lad i WlLBWTitfPURVH 1T-5I Nice to see vou awake. i I HUM' REX MORGAN. M.D. WHEW LMPA ADWTS THAT SHE THIMK SHE WAS RESPONSIBLE outbursts of viouemce. dr.

REASSURES HER I DONALD DUCK THIS IS I SrAALY I frOSTX! jmm BLONDIE. ItHS THE MVSTEBY BOOK I'VE GASOLINE ALLEY Chipper tells me you're I MY DAD'S sl iwtMKv Win Fbii. Ma jrity weaker candidate to prevent splitting the vote. Guy Hermier, a member of the Communist Party Politburo, reiterated that Communist support for Socialist candidates in some districts did not mean approval of. Socialist policies.

"We will judge them by their acts," said Hermier. The two main conservative parties already backed a single candidate. But in the few districts in which a far-right National Front candidate was leading, the traditional rightist candidate withdrew, and vice versa. The rnain conservative parties denied there was any deal with the National Front, accused by most politicians of being racist and xenophobic. Mitterrand said recently that it was unhealthy for the country to be run by one party alone, but his effort to open his government to non-Socialists largely failed.

Historical Battalion Reactivated SAN ANGELO (AP) A historical Army battalion that has been out of action for 20 years was reactivated during the weekend. The 3rd Battalion of the 132nd Field Artillery, 49th Armored Division was first formed on May 15, 1917, as a part of the Texas Army National Guard during World War said Lewis O. King, executive director of the National Guard Association of Texas. After serving with distinction in World War II, it was reorganized and reactivated several times before finally locating in San Angelo on June 1, 1959, as the Third Rocket Howitzer Battalion, 132nd PARIS (AP) President Francois Mitterrand's Socialists failed to win a majority in Sunday's National Assembly elections and must form a coalition or attempt to govern with a minority. With returns lacking only from territories in the Caribbean and South Pacific, the Socialists and the conservative parties were in a near dead heat, but only the Socialists were in a position to form a governing coalition in the 577-seat assembly.

At least 289 seats are needed for a majority. With 10 districts still undecided, the Socialists won 271 seats and the Communists 26. The conservative Rally for the Republic won 126 seats, the center-right Union for French Democracy 129 and minor rightists 14 for a total of 269. The extreme-right National Front won one seat. Its leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was defeated in Marseille.

Mitterrand could form a coalition with the Communists or try to lure centrists away from the rightist camp. "Francois Mitterrand does not have a majority, therefore we won," declared Jacques Toubon, secretary-general of the Rally for the Republic. "The ball is in his camp. It is up to him to manage his defeat." But Pierre Mauroy, first secretary of the Socialist Party, said, "The right is beaten. It will not win a majority of seats.

Only the Socialist Party is in a position to constitute a parliamentary majority." Georges Marchais, secretary-general of the Communist Party, said it was out of the question that his party would participate in a Socialist government. He said the Communists would support bills it approved and fight "everything that goes against its interests." Jean Lecanuet, president of the Union for French Democracy, did I'VE MET WITH i 4 yXVL BE HOME, WAITING FOR YOUR i.