That’s No Beaver; It’s A Gator
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 27th, 2009
Reporter Robert Medley writes of state game wardens, who are investigating a man’s report of seeing an alligator in an Oklahoma City pond, a month after a similar animal was seen nearby.
Jason Hall, 33, said he was walking his dog about 10 p.m. Monday at Dolese Youth Park, just northwest of N Meridian Avenue and NW 50, when he saw something slithering on the surface of the pond. At first he thought it was a beaver, he said, but when he got a closer look at the snout he saw it appeared to be an alligator.
“That was no beaver,” he said.
Hall said he watched the 4-foot animal swim around and swoosh its tail back and forth as it circled toward him and his dog. He said he watched the creature swimming around for about an hour.
The animal came within 10 feet of him, he said, adding there is cause for concern. “There are ducks and geese and people who walk their dogs out here,” Hall said.
On Oct. 19, a tenant at Willow Cliff Lakeshore Apartments, 5304 Willow Cliff Road, reported seeing what was described as a 2-foot alligator in the apartment complex pond. The pond is about a quarter mile from Dolese Youth Park Pond.
Micah Holmes, spokesman for the state Department of Wildlife Conservation, said game wardens searched the apartment complex pond with no luck. Holmes said wardens now plan to search at Dolese Youth Park.
Holmes said beavers make motions with their tails as described by Hall.
Officials said someone may have released a pet. Alligators are illegal to own as pets in the state, Holmes said.
An alligator in central Oklahoma would not be likely to survive the winter, Holmes said.
“This is not alligator weather,” he said.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
