Is Beaver Run Gator Still Out There?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 26th, 2012
Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County workers saw a five-foot alligator in the Beaver Run Reservoir last September, and took this photograph. Will there be any sightings this spring?
The Pittsburgh paper ran the following update on Monday, March 26, 2012:
The Beaver Run Alligator might still be alive.
Experts expected that the alligator, which workers at Beaver Run Reservoir spotted in the fall, wouldn’t survive the usually harsh temperatures of a Western Pennsylvania winter.
But Mother Nature might have given it a break.
“This is the mildest winter I can remember,” said Henry Kacprzyk, curator of reptiles at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. “In order for it to die, you would have to have some sustained cold weather.
“I would say there’s a possibility it survived.”
According to the National Weather Service, the average temperature this winter was 34.6 degrees — about 4.2 degrees higher than normal.
Zoo officials believe the alligator was dropped off at the reservoir by someone who had kept it as a pet and couldn’t take care of it anymore.
The fate of the “Beaver Run Gator” caused a stir last fall when officials at the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County said they would let it die during the winter.
After public outcry and a Facebook page supporting the alligator, municipal officials allowed Pittsburgh zoo workers onto reservoir property in hopes of capturing the alligator and sending it to a sanctuary in Florida. The reservoir usually is closed to the public.
Multiple attempts to capture the gator were unsuccessful. Some observers said the animal was 5 feet long, but zoo officials said people tend to overestimate size.
Kacprzyk said the only way to know if the alligator made it through the winter is if someone spots it. That hasn’t happened yet, said Gina Cerilli, spokeswoman for the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County.
“We always have security looking over our property,” she said. “None of our employees have seen the alligator.”
Judy Lindberg, a retired Penn State New Kensington professor who lives less than four miles from the reservoir, in Washington Township, said the alligator has become the subject of local lore.
“People call it the Loch Ness Monster,” she said. “Most people around here think it was cruel to just let it die during the winter, so we hope it survived.”
Could the alligator still be lurking in the 25-mile-long reservoir?
“Until someone sees it, we don’t really know,” Kacprzyk said.
Read more: “Mother Nature may have spared Beaver Run gator,” – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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.
As cruel as it might sound, I would have been perfectly fine to find out the gator had gone into ‘hibernation’ mode and never woke up. They don’t belong in our area and I’m not keen to have them lurking about. Thankfully that reservoir is fenced so no one (should) be playing about or swimming in its waters. Although I dare say the ducks and fish are not fairing so well.
Hooray! It might still be alive! This is awesome news! Thank You, Mother Nature! :D!