MORNING CALL (Allentown, Pennsylvania) 28 June 06 Crocodilians, which can grow, make poor pets (Frank Devlin)
As I was reading last week about the alligator captured in Pottstown, it occurred to me that some people still haven't gotten the message about alligators.
It's a pretty simple message. In fact, even if no one ever told you the message, you probably could figure it out for yourself: Alligators should not be pets!
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week that a 5-foot-long American alligator was spotted by a man delivering the Pottstown Mercury newspaper the morning of June 19. He notified the police, who captured the alligator.
The gator is going to end up at the Croc Encounters Reptile Park & Wildlife Center in Tampa, Fla. For now, it's at the Forgotten Friends Reptile Sanctuary in Lancaster County. The beast presumably will spend the rest of its days wowing reptile enthusiasts.
A happy ending.
Until you get to thinking, what was an alligator doing in Pottstown?
Police reportedly think the gator was a pet that got too difficult to handle, so the owner released it.
I'd rather think, until it's proven otherwise, that the alligator escaped. I want to believe someone didn't just let an alligator loose on an unsuspecting town. I hope someone in the Pottstown area wasn't foolish or reckless enough to just let the thing go.
Then again, don't you have to be pretty foolish or reckless to have an alligator for a pet?
Jesse Rothacker, who runs the Forgotten Friends sanctuary, thinks so. ''I wish I could say it was uncommon,'' he told me. ''But this week we've had four alligator calls.''
In addition to the Pottstown case, he said, three people, all from Pennsylvania, called about getting the sanctuary to take in a gator. One owner had been called up by the National Guard. Another was moving away from his parents, who weren't about to take care of the critter.
''It's a little bit easier having someone watch your dog than your alligator,'' Rothacker said.
It was an unusually busy week for his shelter on the gator front, he said, but so far this year, ''we've had a call for close to 20 alligators and we're a small organization. We're not that well-known.''
Croc Encounters in Florida has pet alligators — make that former pet alligators — ''coming in from all over the country,'' he said. Asked to guess how many alligators or other members of the crocodilian category are pets in the United States, Rothacker said it would have to be in the thousands.
''It's an image thing,'' he said, adding it's sort of an extreme version of owning a pit bull ''to look tough.''
While the problem of people keeping alligators as pets seems bigger than many of us realize, a mitigating factor is that crocodilians are not so dangerous as some may fear.
Rothacker said alligator attacks are ''extremely rare.''
''They are not natural predators of man,'' he said.
On the other hand, he said, crocodiles are very dangerous, and people have been known to keep them as pets, too.
While Rothacker was highly critical of alligator owners, he did say some sellers of alligators, which can be had for as little as $50 when they are babies, mislead customers.
Some tell customers the alligators won't get big if they are kept in a small enclosure, which is false, Rothacker said.
The chances of someone taking care of the American alligator found in Pottstown for its entire life are just about nil, he said. For one thing, a male can grow to almost 15 feet. And there's also the matter that many crocodilians can live 50 years in captivity.
''Greater than 99 percent of people are going to unload it before it gets to half its adult size,'' he said.
Which is a shame.
It's even more irresponsible if an alligator is just let loose on an unsuspecting town.
http://www.mcall.com/news/columnists/all-b1_2crocodiliansjun28,0,7727956.column?coll=all-randomcolumnistsnews-misc
