Chicago Croc Caught
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 7th, 2010
The summer crazy crocs keep turning up, this time in Chicagoland.
The alligator was first reported by UPI and Chicago area media on August 5, 2010, to have been seen by a passerby. Animal control officers also made a brief sighting later that day, the Chicago Tribune reported. When a Chicago Herpetological Society member found it in the trap in a city park at 5 a.m. Friday, August 6, 2010, the alligator turned out to be 2.5 feet from snout to tail.
Eloy Navarro, who saw the alligator, said it was “just a baby.”
Cherie Travis, director of the Chicago Animal Care and Control Commission, said the alligator was probably a former pet. She said its adventures illustrate why keeping dangerous animals as pets is illegal in Illinois.
“Anything’s cute when it’s little, including a baby alligator, and it probably was released because it was getting bigger and acting more like what it is — a wild animal,” Travis told the Tribune.
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.
I have a baby gator and my 3 year old holds it. I have a home lined up for it when it gets too big. It’s reports like this that make me angry. People don’t take care of their pets. Gators are not good pets when they are larger, it’s kinda like growing your own lobster tail. Plus there is a new law in effect that requires all big reptiles to be tagged so when its release it can be scanned and an owner can be charged. (at least here in Ohio that’s the law)