May 26, 2012
Eric Vaughan, 13, holds his prize catch. Courtesy photo.
Two adolescents out for a fishing trip on May 25, 2012, Friday, on Stevens Pond, near Manchester, New Hampshire, captured a reptilian surprise.
Eric Vaughan and Jesse Philbin, both 13-year-old seventh-graders at McLaughlin Middle School, caught a young, 2.5-foot crocodilian. The boys think it is an alligator.
“We thought it was just going to be a regular day of fishing,” Vaughan told local media. “And we hooked a gator. It was awesome.”
Vaughan said the two sighted the gator as soon as they arrived at the pond Friday afternoon. They twice tried to catch it, but it swam away. The third try got him, Vaughan said. The boys dangled a hook in front of the alligators snout.
“He took it and bit down and it hooked him,” Vaughan said.
It immediately tried to bite them.
“It hissed at us and was making these noises like a bullfrog makes,” Philbin said.
(See video here.)
The reptile was turned over to city animal control officers, police Lt. Michael Hurley said.
Hurley said officers had been trying to catch the animal before it grew larger and more dangerous. Hurley said the alligator will be turned over to a group that specializes in rescuing reptiles.
(Thanks to Stacy Levasseur, ICM State Representative for NH, for the newstip.)
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.
Filed under Breaking News, Crazy Crocs, CryptoZoo News, Out of Place, Weird Animal News