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DAILY BREEZE (Los Angeles, California) 17 August 05 Gator wranglers fail to nab reptile in the 1st round - Jay Young vows to catch the beast in two days or do the job for free thereafter. But the elusive reptile gives him the slip at Harbor Regional Park. (Donna Littlejohn)
Two barefoot, made-for-television alligator wranglers stepped up the hunt Tuesday for Machado Lake's elusive alligator-like reptile, but remained empty-handed as the night wore on.
Wearing a leather safari-style hat adorned with alligator teeth, Jay Young, owner/manager of the Colorado Gator Farm and Reptile Park in Mosca, Colo., arrived at Harbor Regional Park early Tuesday with his assistant, Paul Wertz, to take charge in the city's fifth day of pursuing the reptile.
Using a 500-foot fishing net, the colorful pair cordoned off a section of Machado Lake by midday and spent the night patrolling the lake aboard a boat with a spotlight.
But as of 10 p.m., the aggressive pursuit failed to nab the reptile.
Earlier, Young, 31, was confident the animal would be captured by the end of the day, but acknowledged it was an unpredictable job.
"Hopefully, we'll get this over with as soon as possible," he said. "This task is not an easy one. This lake is a large body of water and there is a lot of primrose he can hide under. It's like chasing a needle in a haystack, but every time you get close to the needle it leaves at 30 mph."
Young said the animal is an alligator, about 6 to 7 feet long and weighing between 100 and 120 pounds. Some experts still think the reptile is a caiman, however.
Once the animal is ensnared by the net, the alligator wranglers said they will physically wrestle the beast to shore, where he will be put into a 10-foot-long transport box and taken to the Los Angeles Zoo. The animal, thought to be under 10 years old, will be kept in quarantine for 90 days, after which a permanent home will be found.
Young and Wertz, assisted by members of the Southwestern Herpetologists Society and city park rangers, planned to work through the night Tuesday. The search will resume today if the animal is not caught overnight.
The city is paying the wrangler company $800 a day, but with expenses including airfare and hotel, it could wind up costing the city about $3,000. Young has told city officials they will catch the animal in two days or work for free after that.
After being picked up at Los Angeles International Airport, the wranglers arrived at the park early Tuesday morning, wading neck deep into the swampy shoreline and through the tall reeds on the south side of the 53-acre lake in search of the creature. It was, Young joked later, like wading through the "Blog of Eternal Stench."
"We were checking out some tracks in the reeds and I got within 5 or 10 feet of him, but he went under," Young said. "He saw us coming. He doesn't want to get caught, so we decided just to back off for now."
It was the fifth day of the search since reports of the animal were confirmed Friday. Crowds continued to gather to watch, lending an almost festive air to the hunt. Curious spectators arrived with lawn chairs, binoculars, cameras and coolers to spend the day as television news crews set up for live shots. Adults and children lined the yellow tape barrier around the shoreline, trying to catch a glimpse of the alligator.
"What is that?" a young boy asked excitedly, pointing to a ripple in a far corner of the lake. "That black thing. Right behind the duck."
The alligator made only a few brief appearances in the distance on Tuesday, according to onlookers.
Nearby, an ice cream vendor was surrounded by afternoon crowds seeking refreshment.
Others came after work, with flashlights and children. Late in the day, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn held a news conference to give an update on the search.
"I've dealt with a lot of issues -- potholes, sidewalks, streets, trees -- but not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd be dealing with an alligator," Hahn said.
Young, wearing a necklace decorated with alligator teeth, was peppered with questions from the crowd, including why he didn't wear any shoes.
"They only slow you down," he said.
Young has appeared on the Animal Planet channel and elsewhere on television and said he wrestles about 300 alligators a year, with scars on his forearms to show for it.
Enrique Abbo of the Southwestern Herpetologists Society said the animal was probably spooked by the heavy activity on the lake Tuesday.
"He's extremely scared right now," he said. "Our main concern is that he comes out alive."
Gator wranglers fail to nab reptile in the 1st round

DAILY BREEZE (Los Ageles, California) 21 August 05 Officials say they'll 'wait out' harbor park's pesky gator - Hunt will be scaled back as volunteers chart the reptile's patterns to develop a capture strategy. (Donna Littlejohn)
The throngs of media and spectators dwindled this weekend at Machado Lake, where an errant alligator has taken up residence. But behind the scenes, experts are hard at work plotting their next move in what has now become a game of strategy.
"It's all about patience," said Jarron Lucas, a member of the Southwestern Herpetologists Society who has been on the scene all week helping authorities try to catch the reptile. "We need to observe him, you have to watch these animals. They're creatures of habit and they have certain patterns."
For the next few days, Lucas and other volunteers will sit watching by the shore, charting and compiling a log of the 6- to 7-foot-long reptile's movements and schedule.
"That's the plan now," Lucas said. "We'll wait him out."
Wildlife experts said after numerous failed capture attempts, it's a wise approach.
"Somebody needs to spend a few days, maybe a week, and let everything go back to normal," said Martine Colette, director of animal services and the founder of Wildlife Way Station in the Angeles National Forest. "You need to watch for its established patterns and see what it does, how it does it and then make a plan based on those observations."
Neither park rangers nor professional alligator wranglers were able last week to snag the wily critter that was confirmed to be in the lake as of Aug. 12.
"It's a difficult situation," Colette said, noting the thick, floating vegetation, a muddy and uneven floor and the large expanse of the 53-acre lake.
Alligator wrestler Jay Young of Colorado came close to nabbing the creature during late-night hours, according to Lucas.
"I thought they had him twice, but this little bugger is smart," Lucas said. "The one time I thought, 'Hallelujah, he's caught. I can sleep in tomorrow.' "
But after more than 48 hours of almost around-the-clock work, Young and his partner, Paul Wertz, found themselves outwitted. They had to leave Thursday for family and work commitments, but said they were willing to return in two weeks if asked.
So, now city officials are regrouping, hoping a calming-down period will help bring the animal out of hiding.
While having an alligator roaming loose in a city park has stumped Los Angeles city officials, it's nothing new to wildlife authorities in Florida, where the alligator is the state's official reptile.
"We have a philosophy of attempting to live with alligators, but that's difficult to do in some cases since they are a potentially dangerous animal," said biologist Lindsey Hord, coordinator of Florida's Nuisance Alligator Program. "If they're over 4 feet and a potential threat to people or property, we'll go out and remove them."
The department gets 17,000 calls a year and removes an average of 6,000 alligators with a crew of 36 hunters, Hord said.
"There are lots of tried-and-true methods to catch alligators," he said. "It depends on how quick the alligator is and how wary it becomes."
Most techniques rely on using snare poles and floating bait such as pork lung or beef lung, he said.
"They age (the lung meat) to where it starts to rot and has a smell and a flavor," Hord said. "Alligators like to eat carrion, so they'll swallow it right down. We don't have any problem snaring or catching alligators with bait."
Using a big net to divide the pond and try to contain and corner the alligator as Young and Wertz did also can be an effective method, Hord said.
While an alligator's brain is about the size of a thumb tip, they have excellent instincts, good eyesight, smell and hearing -- and they're fast learners, Hord said.
"It's not an animal that has a higher brain function, but alligators have been around for 10 million years," Hord said. "They're survivors, they're not stupid."
After a week of intense activity chasing Machado Lake's stray alligator using boats, huge fishing nets and floodlights, experts agree that a cooling-off period may help.
"The more you mess with them, the more failed attempts there are, the warier they get," Hord said.
The aggressive search at Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park over the past week has probably caused the animal to seek refuge for the time being, Lucas said.
"It was like a SWAT team coming to your house," he said.
Officials say they'll 'wait out' harbor park's pesky gator

DAILY BREEZE (Torrence, California) 23 August 05 Now it's up to the Florida A-Team - If four new rescuers are successful, L.A.'s gator will cross the nation to take up residence at Gatorland. (Donna Littlejohn)
An alligator rescue team from Gatorland, a theme park in Orlando, Fla., flew in Monday night to take over the hunt for Machado Lake's fugitive reptile.
Four alligator handlers from the theme park -- billed as "The alligator capital of the world" -- showed up Monday night, parked their car on a bluff overlooking the lake and shined their headlights over the water. They will use traps to try to snag the wily, 6- to 7-foot-long animal that some believe may be a caiman.
They've agreed to do the job for free. If they succeed, the animal, thought to be an abandoned pet, will go back to live at Gatorland bearing an as-yet undetermined, Los Angeles city-related name, said Ron Berkowitz, harbor region superintendent of the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.
"They've (Gatorland) been in business for 53 years and they're among the best rescuers in the United States," Berkowitz said. "They have more manpower and more updated equipment."
"Our main objective is to capture this gator safely and make sure we can return the shoreline back to the public," said harbor-district Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn.
Jay Young and Paul Wertz, the Colorado alligator wrestlers who tried for two days last week to catch the alligator at Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park, have been told about the new group. But Young said he'd like to come back for another try should the Gatorland crew fail.
Young and Wertz came recommended to the city, Berkowitz said, and were the first ones who could be on the scene within 24 hours, working through the day and much of the night last Tuesday and Wednesday. They were paid $800 a day plus expenses.
While herpetologists and volunteers said they haven't seen the animal all weekend, a city parks employee claims to have made a positive identification late Saturday and again Sunday, according to Berkowitz. But there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the gator's whereabouts.
"I physically have not seen him and nobody I know has seen him," said Jarron Lucas of the Southwestern Herpetologists Society. "We have lots of 'sightings' " that turn out to be things like black plastic bags or floating branches.
"There's a lot of junk in there," Lucas said.
The big worry? That the animal could slip out through one of the park's storm drains, Lucas said.
Young said Monday in a telephone interview from Colorado that the sheer size of the 53-acre lake, along with about 20 acres of floating vegetation along the perimeter, made the task especially complex.
"I like challenges and that's why I want to go back," he said, adding that he'd use traps if he is asked to try again. "It's almost impossible without a trap, but there's so much food out there -- there are millions of frogs -- and so finding a way to catch him with food will be difficult at best." Recordings of baby alligator calls could also could be used to try to lure the animal out of hiding, Young said.
Young got within 8 to 10 feet of the animal and said he's sure the Machado Lake reptile is an alligator. Members of the Herpetologists Society still believe it is a caiman, a smaller but less predictable reptile.
When Young had to leave town to attend to personal commitments Thursday, he told city officials he'd be able to return in about two weeks. Local authorities clearly didn't want to wait that long, however, to remove the wild carnivore from the park.
"My goal is the safety of that lake," Berkowitz said. "I really feel that these guys (from Gatorland) will get him."
A group of herpetologists, scientists and volunteers wanted to have at least the rest of this week to better plot the animal's regular movements before another aggressive effort was launched.
But they took the news of Gatorland's imminent arrival in stride Monday.
"We'll just have to let the next cowboy come in and see what he can do," Lucas said.
Want to know how to catch an alligator? Our readers recommend marshmallows. Or grenades. Dozens of readers called to tell us how they would get the gator in Machado Lake. See their suggestions in Wednesday's paper.
Now it's up to the Florida A-Team