My Dragon's Lair Sharing is the reason for my being...: Alligator found walking along LI roadway

WADING RIVER, N.Y. - A 3 1/2-foot alligator has been captured walking along a Long Island roadway. Chief Roy Gross of the Suffolk County SPCA said the reptile was found by two people who were walking alongside a grassy area of Route 25A in Wading River on Sunday afternoon.

A crew from the SPCA picked up the alligator, who had some front teeth missing, but Gross said it was still capable of inflicting serious injury to humans and death to small animals and pets.

The alligator, estimated to be between 3 and 4 years old, was found in a rural area of eastern Long Island, and Gross suspects it may have been dumped there by someone who could no longer care for it.

"These animals are extremely dangerous and now they're being abandoned on the side of the road where people walk and cycle," said Gross, who noted his agency has collected 112 reptiles of various sorts, including several alligators, in the past year.

"With cooler temperatures on the way, this gator would have had a real tough time surviving."

He said the Suffolk County SPCA was offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for abandoning the alligator. Owning alligators is illegal in New York, he added.

The captured alligator will be sent to a sanctuary out of state, Gross said. Wed Sep 26

Oct 14, 2006 Four-foot alligator found on LI
According to officials in Suffolk County, a call came in this morning to local police about the alligator discovered near Mill Pond Road.
Full story: WABC-TV New York - Oct 13, 2006 [link might not work?]

The mill pond in Speonk has at its north end an excellent source of fresh water, and there is a man made reservoir that was built for scuba diving instruction.
Many of the snapping turtles and other, larger sea turtles from Moriches Bay are apparently moving into the reservoir from the mill pond and the brackish Speonk River, giving many of the amateur scuba divers in the reservoir quite a scare. A plesiosaur was apparently recently noted by one or two amateur divers, and now a whole wave of sightings has been set off.
The apparent plesiosaur lives in the deepest part of the reservoir, which is fifteen feet deep in the middle. It has been also seen rearing its head by employees of the Long Island Railroad, which has a train yard just west of the reservoir. It has been seen enough that it is becoming known as the Speonk Sea Monster.
It doesn't croak like a frog like conductors on the railroad make a point of doing when they announce Speonk on the train. Witnesses report hearing a high pitched whine before the creature disappears deep into the reservoir, apparently timid at the thought of being seen by anybody..
By the way, Happy Halloween!.. Sincerely, Setalcott - Topix

Google had an incident in June and Oct 2006 and also this story below.

NYC Police Capture 'Caiman-In-The-Box' New York Police Capture 'Caiman-In-The-Box' at Housing Complex in Brooklyn http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2685208

The Associated Press By RICHARD PYLE
NEW YORK Nov 28, 2006 (AP) See you later, alligator. After while, crocodile. What rhymes with caiman? Well, nothing, really. But that doesn't keep the scaly critters from turning up in New York City, far from their native habitats in the tropical Americas, and replenishing one of the city's most enduring urban legends.

The last time it happened was in June, 2001, when a small caiman was discovered in the Harlem Meer, a lake in the northeast corner of Central Park. After it eluded capture for five days, a self-described alligator expert flew in from a Florida game park to save the city. After some posturing, he used a canoe and a flashlight to retrieve the reptile in minutes.

Not requiring outside help, the 75th Precinct cops gathered up the croc-in-the-box and turned it over to Animal Care & Control, a privately funded organization that handles all manner of animals, wild or domestic, that are lost, injured or in distress.

In this case, "the caiman was cold, and we had to warm it up," said Richard Gentles, director of administration for AC&C. But whoever left it in the box was concerned that nobody got hurt, he said. "It was pretty feisty. The shoestring was double-knotted for safety, like a running shoe."

Gentles said the caiman would be turned over to a licensed wildlife care center on Long Island or in New Jersey that specializes in rehabilitation of reptiles and eventually returned to a natural habitat.

Caimans are the most common of all crocodile species, found in lowland and watery environments in a vast region stretching from the southern United States to Brazil, according to one Web site on the species. They can grow to four feet and in rare cases even larger.

One of Gotham's most enduring legends is the alligator-in-the-sewer, which students of the subject trace to Feb. 10, 1935 when a group of teenagers discovered a seven-foot 'gator in a manhole in East Harlem. Hauled out with a rope, it tried feebly to open its jaws and was dispatched with snow shovels, according to a story in The New York Times.

NYC Police Capture 'Caiman-In-The-Box' 1 2 Next

Labels: alligator, crocodile, Long Island, New York