These pictures were taken by a KTBS helicopter flying over Lake Weiss about 90 miles north of Birmingham:

 

Hope these are actual real pictures?

 

There is a transcript of the conversation between Air 1 and the game warden on the ground. It is not a clean copy / paste but, I will work on it in a bit.

This gator is 28' 1 " in length.

 

Those are crazy pictures.

 

Big gator needs a big lunch.

 

I just noticed that they were using a backhoe to hoist the gator up.

Hmm maybe I should expand my business into gator hoistin'!

 

That guy will make a lot of shoes and purses.

 

was the gator bothering people? just wondering why they killed it

 

Why'd they kill it?

 

Damn that's a big gator.

And yeah, why'd they kill it?

 

snopes.com: Gatorade

Not only has the story grown over the past 4 years, the gator has apparantly also grown from 12-13 feet long to 27 feet as the story was passed on....

The gator hanging in the photo is not the same gator either....

 

Here's the gator on the crane:

snopes.com: Giant Alligator

Its only 13 feet as well.

 

Figured it had been around for a while. But, I hadn't seen it.

A 13 footer is big enough. Don't cha think?

 

Yeah its huge. I actually didn't go hunting on snopes... I did a quick search to see if I could find the transcripts and snopes came up. It does have truth to the story though... the details grew over time, like a fishing story!

 

The backhoe picture is only a matter of forced perspective. If you look at the shadows thrown by various things in the picture, you realize the cop walking by is at least 6 feet away from the animal. Taking that into perspective, it only appears to be about 10-12 feet long.

The two other pictures make the gator more realistic as well. Consider that the deer's body from the base of the neck to the tail is about 4 feet, and transpose that distance over the tip of the snout of the gator, it only ends up being about 10-12 feet as well. Still a big gator, but the backhoe picture and context of the other two pictures get people's imaginations running.

Granted, you don't really see a gator dragging Bambi's mom off every day, but it's not all that surprising...deer approachers shoreline to drink, gator suprises deer, end of story. It is a big gator, though.