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Tattered tales from the swamp

Tallahassee, Fla., veterinarian Jerry Deloney’s 22-foot-long, carpet-and-styrofoam gator with the Seminole spear through its head was designed to tweak Gator fans.

Apparently, it worked.

A band of carousing, tuxedo-clad University of Florida fans with a video camera and doing the “Gator Chomp” with their arms tore the hapless creature to pieces last week and made off with the life-sized, stuffed Wil E. Coyote that had been hammering a hatchet on its head.

“I stick it out there to rag ‘em, and this time they took the bait,” Deloney said, having spent a lot of time rebuilding the gator. “He’s still got a lot of facial damage that I won’t be able to get to until next year.”

The gator was mounted atop Deloney’s animal ambulance, along with the stuffed dog dressed in a Florida State football helmet. A pizza delivery man from a neighboring shop noticed the alligator was missing from the van, and later saw several well-dressed men stomping on it.

Deloney hopes to put the alligator back on his ambulance by Tuesday - in plenty of time for the Jan. 2 Sugar Bowl game between Florida and Florida State.

Game, set, snatched

A German tax investigator raided Boris Becker’s home and took away several files.

The documents seized last week from the tennis star’s Munich home concerned 1990-93, when Becker was living in Monaco to avoid high German taxes, the German newspaper Bild reported, without naming sources.

Becker was on vacation in Florida.

In an apparently unrelated move, Becker told a German television station he will leave Germany in the next few years because he doesn’t want to send his son Noah, now 3 years old, to primary school in Germany.

Becker, whose wife is black, apparently is worried about threats against him and his family.

They likely will move to the United States, where Becker has a house in Indian Wells, Fla.

Isn’t that where Peter Graf built his American mansion?

Dancing for dollars

The Boston Celtics are the last team without a dance troupe, although their objection seems to be rooted more in price than principle.

“I’ll tell you this,” says G.M. and coach M.L. Carr, “if we ever do have cheerleaders or a dance team, it’ll be a corporate sponsored thing and we’ll make a lot of money off it. They’ll be called the New Balance somethings or something like that.

“I don’t think it would just be to have people to cheer the team. You’re always thinking of ways to generate revenue and maybe some corporation will want to spend an enormous amount of money for that publicity.”

How about the Maidenform Playthings? During timeouts they could pass out cup holders.

Mother knows best

When French yachtswoman Catherine Chabaud, 34, set off in the Vendee Globe solo round-the-world race, her mother’s parting words were: “Don’t lean overboard, and make sure you put a scarf on when you go outside.”

The last word …

“‘I’m going to be in every weight-loss program available after football. I’ll be into liposuction and ab-crunchers and, if that doesn’t work, then I’m just going to stay in bed, eating, and have them bury me in a piano.”

- Dallas Cowboys’ Nate Newton, who weighs 332 pounds

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