MAIL-TRIBUNE (Medford, Oregon) 12 September 06 Loose alligator rounded up
Grants Pass: Josephine County animal control officers have a three-foot-long alligator in custody after a couple found it in the 5100 block of Clover Lawn Drive, Grants Pass, Sunday afternoon.
Mark Clark and his wife, Brenda, were driving home Sunday when they spotted the little gator on the road and stopped.
They thought it was a piece of wood until it moved.
"Then I thought it was a lizard and it ran into a guy's yard," Mark Clark said.
When he followed it, the reptile "turned and charged at me and I knew it was an alligator," he said. Clark tried to herd the toothy critter with a stick, but it snapped the stick in half with its powerful jaws, he said.
With help from the yard's owner, Clark subdued the alligator with a blanket and tied its mouth shut with a rope.
He won it over with some belly scratching and called it Steve, in honor of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, who died last week.
"It was sitting in my lap and I was petting it," Clark said.
Alligator Steve was waiting calmly in a plastic tote when Andrew Aguiñaga, lead officer with Josephine County Animal Protection and Regulation, arrived shortly after 5 p.m. Sunday to pick it up.
"I'm used to getting calls about dangerous dogs or loose cattle, but this was different," Aguiñaga said.
The county animal protection agency placed the gator in a quarantine kennel at its shelter in Merlin until officials can track down the owner or a new home for it. They've placed a children's plastic swimming pool in the concrete room and offered up tempting meals of raw chicken. Aguiñaga said an animal rescue group in Coos County, Fuzzy Farms Animal Rescue, is willing to pick up the alligator later this week, keep it for a 30-day quarantine period, then send it to Alligator Alley, a large rescue operation in Alabama. Josephine County doesn't have an exotic pet ordinance that restricts keeping alligators as pets, he said. State law doesn't restrict the potentially dangerous pets either, but does levy fines and hold owners responsible for damage if the critters get loose.
http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2006/0912/local/stories/alligator-ab.htm
REGISTER-GUARD (Eugene, Oregon) 12 September 06 This Steve's a gator, not a croc: Reptile on run caught carefully
Grants Pass (AP): Call it ``Steve,'' and never mind that it's a gator, not a croc.
A 4-foot alligator captured in Grants Pass has been named for ``Crocodile Hunter'' Steve Irwin, who died last week when attacked by a stingray.
Mark Clark said he almost ran over the alligator running loose on Sunday.
He stopped his van and took off after it.
``Then it turned around and chased me, snapping its jaws,'' he said.
Fortunately, the gator turned back around.
That's when a neighbor poked his head out of the house to inquire ``what the heck was going on. I told him we were trying to catch the gator,'' Clark told the Grants Pass Daily Courier. ``He thought I was joking. Then he saw it.''
The neighbor supplied twine and a rug. Clark, who once had baby gators for pets, wrapped up the reptile for Animal Control Officer Andrew Aguinaga, who was nervous.
``I caught an emu once, and that was weird,'' he said. ``But this is my first alligator.''
Using duct tape, Aguinaga bound the legs and arms - and shut its mouth.
At the shelter, he said, the legs and arms were freed, to be followed by the mouth, for feeding. Chicken was to be on the menu.
Aguinaga and Clark said they were trying to find the owner.
It's not illegal to own an alligator, Aguinaga said, but they are regulated. If the owner can't be found, he said, he'll try to find a rescue operation to take Steve.
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/09/12/c2.or.gatorsteve.0912.p1.php?section=nation_world
