Gator Roundup – Summer 2006
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 13th, 2006
You’d think the Loch Ness Monster had shown up wearing a feather boa made out of ivory-billed woodpeckers and started beating hippie kayakers with the petrified corpse of a Bigfoot. – Mark Hinson, Tallahassee Democrat, August 13, 2006.
The US government’s official map of incidents of out-of-place alligators. For more detailed information on locations and citations, click here. Please click on the map for fuller-sized version.
You may recall on May 14th, 2006 (“Why Cryptozoology Is Interested In Alligator Sightings”, I predicted a summer of higher than normal reports of alligators being sighted and found. The war news from Iraq and from Lebanon-Israel (especially since July 12th) and recent terror plots have forced some of the gator incidents onto the back pages, but there have been several events reported nevertheless. Here is a quick roundup of the out-of-place alligator and related crazy croc incidents that I’ve tracked since the killing of three women by gators in Florida. Your OOP gator contributions are welcome.
An American alligator is often nearly invisible in its natural habitat. Please click on image for full-size version.
Austria
During mid-May 2006, at the Austrian lake Silbersee, near the town of Villach, sightings of allegedly a 5 feet long American caiman were recorded. No clarification on how they could tell it was a caiman versus a crocodile or an alligator, however. I have nothing on this one being captured.
Tennessee
Around this same time, May 2006, wildlife agents at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency received reports of alligator sightings on McKellar Lake, a backwater of the Mississippi just south of Memphis, and at T.O. Fuller State Park, north of the city. Up to five alligators may have been seen, including one said to be close to 7 feet long that was reportedly spotted on a bank of McKellar Lake. Alligators’ natural range is suppose to be south of Tennessee. No word on any being caught or relocated.
Texas
On May 19, 2006, game wardens in Texas put out an alligator alert because of several sightings on North Texas lakes – an unusual occurrence apparently – with the latest on the north side of Lake Lewisville, near Fort Worth. No news of any relocations or captures.
Alabama
May 31 saw stories coming out of northern Alabama of water-skiers on the Elk and Tennessee rivers having sightings of alligators over the Memorial Day weekend. Here specifically, the interest in these encounters are being blamed on “fear” due to the “three recent fatal gator attacks in Florida.” But alligators should not have been a surprise here since they were introduced into the nearby Wheeler Wildlife Refuge in the the 1920s.
Arizona
A month later, gator news has returned to reports on out of place incidents, mostly. One of the bigger stories of the summer was from Mesa, Arizona, where beginning during the last week of June 2006, the La Valencia apartment complex lake appeared to have an alligator in it. It was eating the lake’s ducks. Sightings told of residents seeing its head and tail. This alligator was never captured, as far as I could track this one.
Missouri
On June 30, reports of a series of sightings at a lake near Camdenton, Missouri, are met with some skepticism as not physical evidence can be found.
Oklahoma
Search parties went out on July 26 and 27, 2006, looking for an alligator after sightings in the previous days at Battle Creek Golf Course near 51st Street South and 145th East Avenue, Tulsa, Oklahoma. The four-feet-long gator had been seen in a Broken Arrow retention pond. It was never captured, apparently.
North Carolina
Then in last July, with most stories breaking in the media on the 29th, the “scaly, green creature” of French Broad River, near Brevard, North Carolina, began getting press attention. Sightings of the three feet long animal had been occurring for awhile. But only after photographs were taken did herpetologist Charlie Green determine it must be a caiman, out of place and discarded. There is late breaking news of the capture of this one, which I detail at the end of this column.
Montana
On July 31, 2006, Keynan McGuire and Josh Bryant, both 11, caught a 5-foot-long, 60-pound alligator at the Shady Lane fishing pond, in Evergreen, near Kalispell, Montana. There apparently had not been any sightings in the area before the gator was caught on the new fishing rod that Bryant had just received for his birthday, July 31. Now that will be one to remember! (The alligator was later destroyed by wildlife officials when it was found to be in rough shape from attempts to kill it by parents and friends of the boys. It is in a freezer in Montana at the Fish, Wildlife and Parks office but the agency is not sure what they will do with it.)
Massachusetts
On August 6, 2006, the Boston Herald had a summary article on out-of-place alligators. It said, in part:
Each year, the state environmental police typically find about 10 of the ravenous reptiles wading in the state’s murky waters. But Ralbovsky says more than a dozen of the illicit alligators he takes in every year are seized in drug busts or domestic disputes….
In Townsend last month, two gigantic alligators dumped in a remote residential area were finally corraled after worried residents holed up in their homes and checked their backyard pools for the feisty creatures.
And two weeks ago, one Norwood man fishing in Attleboro reeled in the biggest catch of his life when he netted an 8-inch baby alligator taking a dip in secluded Mechanic Pond.
“I was absolutely stunned,” said Steve Flaherty, 41.
Arizona
Meanwhile on August 10, 2006, at Scottsdale, Arizona, a 3 1/2-foot-long alligator in a lake at the McCormick Ranch Golf Club, 7505 E. McCormick Parkway, was captured. One news article said: “Unlike false reports of a gator that drew crowds to Mesa in June, 2006, this one was for real.”
Is a sighting of an alligator that is not captured all of a sudden a “false report”?
North Carolina
BTW, one of the best articles with a sense of humor about this entire out-of-place alligator business just appeared on Sunday, August 13, 2006, by Mark Hinson at the Tallahassee Democrat. Hinson went in search of the French Broad, Transylvania County (yes, that is not at joke), North Carolina, alligator. He writes, in part:
Three days before my voyage, a live, 3-foot-long alligator was lassoed and pulled out of the river. According to the laws of nature and complicated tax codes, alligators are not supposed to live in the French Broad. It’s too far north. The climate is wrong. And, compared to Florida, there aren’t as many Yankee tourists for them to eat.
The rogue gator, who was named Wiley by its captors, made big news around the region where North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee all bump heads.
The alligator is all people can talk about. It’s the gator this, the gator that. You’d think the Loch Ness Monster had shown up wearing a feather boa made out of ivory-billed woodpeckers and started beating hippie kayakers with the petrified corpse of a Bigfoot.
“People kept coming back and telling us they’d seen an alligator on the French Broad,” Headwaters Outfitters river guide Sid Cullipher said before setting me adrift in my “Purple Rain” raft.
“We kept saying, ‘Sure you did.’ We have a thing up here called the Hell-Bender Salamander. It’s a pretty big salamander, so we thought that’s what they were seeing.”
When some canoeists brought back a digital photo of Wiley’s beady eyes and unmistakable snout, the river guides knew moonshine was not involved. Cullipher rounded up a posse and went on a gator hunt.
Hinson says more, but you get the idea. Alligators can be fun.
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.
Hey their areas to live are getting smaller and smaller. They have to go some where and try and surive. I do wonder though in a few of these places if maybe someone had bought a baby it got a little bigger than they wanted to mess with and dumped it in a lake or river sysytem.
The 11 years olds that caught the 5ft 60lb WOW it is just lucky neither of them were injured. I bet that is one story they will be telling their grandchlidren about. I wonder as they get older if it will become something like 10ft and 2-300lbs and become a legend!!
I would say these gators turning up in more places are a result of the success of their species, after almost being wiped out last century they’ve turned around and re-populated their original range, and then some. Crocodilians are hard-core survivors, remember they’ve been around since the dinos. Like the armadillo entry, these animals are pushing their range farther north because the winters in the southern US haven’t been as bad as in years past. I welcome the armadillos, the gators, not so much.
“You’d think the Loch Ness Monster had shown up wearing a feather boa made out of ivory-billed woodpeckers and started beating hippie kayakers with the petrified corpse of a Bigfoot.”
Best quote ever.
loren here in az just last week a different gator was captured i think still in mesa. not the one they were first looking for but a 3 1/2 footer.
Humm, c&c2, yes, that’s mentioned above, under the second note on Arizona, from Scottsdale.
Is there a possibility some of these alligators may be discarded pets that have managed to adapt to their environments? It’s no secret that people own animals that they’re not supposed to…
doh! as cc2 slaps his forehead.
If I were to play prophet of doom for a moment here, perhaps this is but the vanguard of a vast crocodilian invasion force. These armour-plated reptiles witnessed the rise and fall of the dinosaurs with their dispassionate, reflective eyes, not to mention the advance and retreat of countless ice ages. In their cold, reptilian blood, perhaps they now sense that their time is coming again. The world is warming fast, and the seas are rapidly rising. To best exploit these choice conditions, they need to place their sleeper agents as broadly as possible. For every one we see, perhaps a dozen continue to lurk unnoticed in the dank and dismal fens we prefer to shun. When the proper moment arrives, perhaps they shall emerge from the murky depths en masse, putting an end to what remains of our pathetic little simian civilization, and usher in a new age of savage saurians…
…or not…
More evidence of global warming? Just kidding, but it is amazing to see how far out of the ‘accepted’ range these things are found. Could be a normal result of habitat loss and multidecadal climate cycle; we have not been tracking those sorts of these nearly as long as the experts’ conclusions might imply.
Its intriguing to think that people may have spread these guys into areas they were never able to access without human intervention, but then there is a possibility that the habitat there could still be suitable. AZ is a good example – I have no doubt that, left alone they could reproduce and thrive (Provided that people keep bringing feral housecats around).
This reminds me of the starling, or more recently, the snake headed fish in Florida.
Surely, if some of those giant hellbenders in WV could find prey items and ride out the sub-zero wintertimes buried in mud, well then a gator could probably live out his life happily near the oufall of a power plant cooling pond in the Kanawha River. If he likes to eat carp and could stand the smell.
In the late 60’s, gators faced near-extinction here in FL mainly due to the skin trade, now it’s not uncommon to census hundreds in a single body of water; heck, Payne’s Prairie SP south of Gainesville boasts a population in the thousands, with some bull males clearing 13 ft. in length. Pretty impressive recovery. It’s illegal here to mess with “el lagarto” in any way, but that doesn’t stop some folks from acquiring one, taking it somewhere else then releasing it when it gets too scary and they can’t deal with the feeding response. That happens with pythons and boas here too. Gators are pretty hardy creatures and they can tolerate temps at or below freezing for short periods of time. Also, caiman are still legal and common in the trade, and released individuals account for a significant percentage of gator sightings here and elsewhere in the US.
once again man is surprised that an animal might actually survive outside the area we have known them to live in, within the last 300 or less years. Our knowledge of these beautiful animals is minimal at best. They are predatory, which means that other than being cold blooded, they literally could go anywhere they wanted to find food. Every state has some river running thru, therefore it is possible that alligators could live anywhere, except for maybe up the colorado river without human intervention.
It’s no surprise to me that gators are being found in NC. They are quite common these days in SC and they have been moving up into the eastern part of NC in recent years, as the map Loren posted seems to illustrate as well.
I am not too impressed with some of these. Now the ones over in Arizona are a bit strange. The ones in Texas, and Tennessee do not seem too strange. The one in Mass. is one for the books.
Having lived and fished and hunted here in Fla. I can tell you first hand that it is not uncommon to catch gators while fishing. In some lakes you can not fish at all after dark! The things steal your bait, cut your line, scare off the bass!
There was a story out of New York last week about a man that had a tiger in his apartment. When the law went to catch it they found a 5 or 6 foot gator in the tub! So the idea that this is being caused by some morons that have no outlook on life beyond tomorrow is probably accurate!
The New York story is from October 2003, but it resurfaced because the guy was in court last week. A New York federal judge dismissed Antoine Yates’ lawsuit filed against police. It claimed they stole from him while sedating a tiger he kept in his apartment. He said the police stole cash and jewelry from him and violated his constitutional rights in October 2003, when they entered his apartment and seized Ming, a nearly 3-year-old tiger. They also found a 6-foot alligator in his apartment. Yates spent three and a half months in jail after he was found guilty of reckless endangerment.
An alligator was found in Stockton Lake Missouri at only about a foot long. It is now in the collection at Dickerson Park Zoo, Springfield MO