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NEW YORK TIMES (New York) 28 November 06 NYC Police Capture 'Caiman - In - The - Box'
New York (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.
On Tuesday, police responding to a 911 call in Starrett City, a public housing complex in Brooklyn, found a two-foot caiman (Spanish for anything ''crocodilian,'' according to one Internet site) in a cardboard box, with a shoelace firmly tied around its jaw.
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. 19, 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.
From that incident apparently grew the widespread myth the city's sewers teemed with reptiles that had been bought as souvenir pets in Florida and were discarded when they became too big for their cages.
For the layman -- there's a rhyme with caiman after all -- Gentles said the scenario is not a total crock. ''They are brought in illegally from the south, as pets, and they outgrow the fish tank or are too hard to manage,'' he said.
NYC Police Capture 'Caiman - In - The - Box'

well it wasn't me i still have my new york caiman

NEW YORK TIMES (New York) 29 November 06 Alligator, Caiman, Whatever. It’s Out Back. ( Robert Stolarik)
Photo: A security officer, while on patrol Tuesday morning at a Brooklyn apartment complex, spotted what he thought was a baby alligator. The creature, as it turned out, is not quite an aligator. (Shadi Rahimi)
The call came in over their radios: “There’s an alligator in the rear!” So six private security officers rushed to help Detective Anthony Stevens, who spotted what he thought was a baby alligator during his routine patrol yesterday morning at a Brooklyn apartment complex.
Alligator sightings are more common than tropical storms in places like Florida, but deep in the heart of Brooklyn, it’s a different story. The 15-inch reptile was found resting in a damp pile of leaves behind one of the 46 apartment buildings that make up the Spring Creek Towers.
“It was weird,” said Detective Luis Hernandez, who arrived behind the building at 1280 Croton Loop shortly after the call went out around 9 a.m. “I’ve seen them on TV and in zoos behind a glass enclosure — never like this.”
What Detectives Stevens and Hernandez, who are part of an armed 80-member force employed by Spring Creek Towers, did not know was that the animal was actually a caiman, a smaller relative of alligators and crocodiles native to the Amazon rainforests and swamps. In New York, it is a popular though illegal exotic pet.
Detective Hernandez approached the reptile from the front, just the way one of his TV heroes, Steve Irwin, the late star of “The Crocodile Hunter,” would have done. “They always jump on the alligators and close their mouths,” he said, describing the tactics used by stars of shows on the Animal Planet network.
When his partner, Detective Holland LaPlant, grabbed the tail, “it started snapping and hissing,” Detective Hernandez said.
Another officer, Detective Frankie Rodriguez, used his baton to push the mouth shut against the ground so Detectives Hernandez and LaPlant could pick it up. A tenant gave them a shoelace from her sneakers, and they tied the mouth shut and put the caiman in a cardboard box.
The caiman was taken to a facility run by Animal Care and Control in Brooklyn, where it was warmed by a lamp in an empty 100-gallon fish tank.
“He’ll rip your finger off if he bites you,” said Ruth Allen, the center’s supervisor, as she stared at the black and beige striped reptile, which she said was about a year old. They can live up to 70 years, she said.
Caimans in New York are not that unusual. Ms. Allen said her organization’s centers around the city received about 10 a year. The one found yesterday will probably be sent out of state to a wildlife sanctuary, she said.
Ms. Allen said most people buy them over the Internet to keep as pets but soon dump them when they realize they are “very aggressive.”
Devorah Fong, a spokeswoman for Spring Creek Towers, believes a tenant probably did just that. Dogs are prohibited at the 5,881-unit complex, while cats and other pets “that don’t need walking” are allowed, she said.
A boa constrictor that got loose in one of the hallways seven years ago caused a slight scare, Detective John Duley said.
“But that was nothing like this,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/nyregion/29lizard.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin