Peltier Hall is home to a few peculiar things:  an abundance of bathroom graffiti, a Reese’s vending machine that oddly enough does not sell Reese’s and even the remains of a slain Louisiana swamp beast.

One of the first things that you will notice when you walk in custodian Richard Borne’s office is a giant white skull.

The skull belonged to an 11-foot-8 inch alligator that was found near a pond on Borne’s property in the outskirts of Labadieville. About a year and a half ago, some friends of Borne’s family saw the gator go into the pond.

“They called my son and said, ‘You’ve got a big one in your pond that you’ve got to get rid of,'” Borne said.

One day, some friends of Borne’s son shot the alligator, but it went underwater and never came back up. Two months later, Borne was rabbit hunting on the property and found the skeleton of the beast along the bank. His son got the head coated, and the skull now sits on a bookshelf behind Borne’s desk in Peltier Hall.

Borne said that the skull gave him a lot of attention around the area. His wife brought it to school in Bayou Louis to show her students who were studying Louisiana history. 

“After that, my wife told me to bring it (the skull) here because she had enough of it at our house,” he laughed as he pointed to a rubber chicken hanging from his wall. “She made me bring that here too.”

This was not the first or last alligator that Borne found on his property. Last year, the water level in the swamp near his home lowered—which made the alligators come to his pond. Since then, Borne and his family have worked to relocate them to the swamp.

“My grandson would catch them, tape their mouths then bring them to the launch across the street to turn them loose,” he said. “We didn’t want to hurt them. We catch the little ones and let them loose in the swamps to live with their cousins and grandmas and grandpas.”

Borne said that he does not want to kill the alligators, but the one that he keeps as a trophy in his office was just too big to move.

“My grandkids play around the pond, and we don’t want them to be in danger,” he said. “It’s just humane. We don’t kill them. As long as you leave them alone and don’t mess with the babies, they’ll leave you alone.”

The water in the swamp has since come up, and Borne said that
many of the alligators have gone back to it rather than his pond.

“We just clean out the pond to make sure they’re out of there,” he said. “If they keep staying in there, others may get drawn to it. Now that the water is back, maybe they’ll stay in the swamp.”

Borne said his alligator stories have made him the subject of many “Swamp People” jokes around the workplace.

“The people around here kid me about it and say, ‘Shoot em! Shoot em!'” he laughed. “I’ve killed a few gators, but I didn’t need Clint with me.”