Crazy Crocs 2011: Ohio “Gator” Killed
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 16th, 2011
Crocs in the north are a lot easier to capture than most people assume. The morning cold in the spring slows them down.
I guess things are getting back to normal. Ohio recorded the find of a “stray alligator” and police officers killed it.
Of course, this brings up a couple questions: How do they know it was an American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) and not an escaped spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus)? And why did they shoot it, instead of attempting a live capture and giving it to the Columbus Zoo?
Here are the initial details from the Columbus Dispatch:
Guernsey County wildlife officer Roby Williams has received a lot of strange calls on the job with the state’s Division of Wildlife.
But the one he got this week about an animal lurking on the outskirts of Cambridge was a new one even for him.
“A local resident contacted me and said they had observed an alligator sunning itself on a log in Crooked Creek,” Williams said.
When he arrived at the creek, Williams found a 31/2-foot American alligator perched blissfully on a fallen tree, soaking up the afternoon sun. He said the alligator likely was a Cambridge resident’s pet that had grown too big to handle and was let go, a fate that befalls a number of exotic animals in Ohio each year.
As in most such cases, the alligator’s story doesn’t have a happy ending. Williams, who said that officers for the state’s Department of Natural Resources have no regulatory authority over animals not native to Ohio, called the Guernsey County sheriff’s office, which sent Lt. Dale Lyons to investigate.
Lyons, at the direction of Sheriff Michael McCauley, killed the animal with a rifle shot before it could slip into the water and escape.
Rest of the article is here.
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.
