Alligator Explores New York’s Concrete Jungle — Reptile Reportedly Couldn’t Hail A Cab
When Deputy Inspector Chris Morello saw an alligator casually crossing Ninth Ave. at W. 205th Street in Manhattan, he had to do a double-take. And it’s hard to get New Yorkers to do a double take.
“I saw them all the time in Miami,” he told the New York Daily News. “But how often do you see an alligator crossing the street in New York?”
Passersby in Manhattan didn’t seem too shocked or frightened by the reptile, which the News said as two feet long but CBS News reported as reaching to three feet.
More than anything else, they were simply curious.
Police think that it was roaming around Manhattan in search of water, perhaps near Harlem Bay. But no one knows how it got in Inwood, and authorities are looking for an owner, NBC New York added.
Alligators in the Hood… http://t.co/pWG7KEo6jF @NYDNcolangelo @NYDailyNews @NYPD34Pct #Inwood #NYC pic.twitter.com/gXzrzc0ay7
— Uptown Collective (@Uptowncollectiv) July 24, 2015
A 3-foot alligator was found roaming around Manhattan. Luckily one of the rats ate it for breakfast.
— Jon Comulada (@joncomulada) July 24, 2015
They only got him for jaywalking, because if you’re a New York alligator, it’s legal to be feisty. http://t.co/VZkmNvheRm
— Margaret Manzi? (@mostquiet) July 24, 2015
Police think that the alligator had just returned from a Broadway show. http://t.co/t7auW39yJ8
— Daniel Bennett (@DanielBennettNY) July 24, 2015
The current theory is that the animal is someone’s pet, and that it either escaped or was dumped in the city. It is likely only 2-years-old and therefore just a baby, so no one thought it was much of a threat, said witness Paul Perez.
“I came out real quick and there was bunch of police officers outside and there was a little, small crocodile facing the gate… it was a baby. I dunno, it just came up the river?”
It was, however, quite feisty.
Officers from the 34th Precinct were charged with keeping the alligator — believed to be the American variety — from slithering out between their fingers and into the rest of the city until emergency crews arrive.
Once they did, it was taken to Animal Care and Control. They’re planning to hand the alligator off to a wildlife rehabilitator outside New York.
Animal rescuer Sean Casey said people who keep the reptiles as pets commonly release them once they get too big. But when they’re young, evidently they can be quite cuddly, according to Antoine Yates, who owned one named Al and a tiger named Ming in Harlem.
“When they are 6-inch little babies, they are the cutest little things. People don’t think about what they are doing.”
[Photo Courtesy Twitter]
