MACON TELEGRAPH (Georgia) 14 April 05 Capture of young alligator draws crowd (Becky Purser)
Warner Robins: Neighbors gathered, a brush crew stopped its work to see what was going on and TV cameras rolled Wednesday as three Warner Robins animal control officers caught a young alligator that had eluded them for four days.
The gator, which was believed to be a female measuring just over 3 feet, was released into the Ocmulgee River shortly after its capture.
George Butts, the city's animal control director, said the gator, named "Palm" for the city street where it claimed a nearby drainage ditch as home, swam out about 15 feet in the river before turning back, swam close to shore and eyed the animal control officers before disappearing below the water.
"She may have come back to show appreciation or to eyeball us in case she could eat us later," Butts said with a laugh. The gator is now too small to eat anything bigger than small fish, frogs and snakes, a Georgia Department of Natural Resources biologist said.
The capture of the gator near 203 Palm Drive brought members of the media, curious neighbors, the secretary for a nearby church and a brush collection crew that momentarily stopped its work to see what all the commotion was about.
"What are they trying to get, a snake?" William Everette asked his co-worker Bobby Releford. The two were loading brush on Palm Drive for Trans Waste, a trash contractor for the city. Releford answered, "No, it's a 'possum."
The two quickly joined the dozen or so residents and media representatives who had lined the ditch from a safe distance just behind Warner Robins Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
Butts and fellow animal control officers Lori Kovarovic and Greg Langston crept hunched over in single file so the gator, down in the ditch, could not see their approach. One carried a net, another a pole with noose on the end and a pole that had large claws at the end, and the third carried another a pole with a noose on the end.
The three hovered over the bank with the gator below, then the net went down and the gator jumped.
"He's still in there," Butts shouted as the gator's tail splashed in the water. The net was positioned over a drainage pipe that the gator had previously used to elude the animal control officers on capture attempts Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
Later, after everyone had gone after the previous failed attempts, the gator would return to sunning itself on the bank.
But not Wednesday.
"I'm not going to let this alligator get away," Butts shouted.
Using all their tools, the animal control officers first got a hold of the gator's tail, then the middle of its body. The gator had a mouthful of net in its small, pointy teeth.
"They got him," said Moses Bull, who lives on Palm Street. "I was just getting ready to set up a stand and sell some soda and sandwiches." Delores Roberts, a secretary at the church, joined several onlookers Wednesday who had their photographs made with the gator once its mouth was taped with black electrical tape. Some petted the gator.
The animal control officers were ecstatic. They shared stories of other successful wildlife rescues and rehabilitation, from a hawk nursed back to health after finding its way into a batting cage to the eventual freeing of an owl found on a dirt road with its legs wrapped in plastic construction tape and its wings clipped.
"Anytime you capture something and put it back in the wild where it belongs, it's a heartwarming thing," Butts said. "You feel like you've accomplished something. It's exhilarating."
Capture of young alligator draws crowd