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DENVER POST (Colorado) 19 August 05 Colo. gator hunter takes break (Bloomberg News and The Associated Press)
Photo: Alligator wrangler Jay Young, owner of the Colorado Gator Farm and Reptile Park in Mosca, Colo., prepares a large fishing net to catch what is believed to be a a 7-foot-long alligator living in Harbor Regional Park in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005. (AP / Nick Ut)
Los Angeles: Alligator wrangler Jay Young took a break and headed back to his native Colorado after several unsuccessful attempts to catch the mysterious gator discovered in a local lake Aug. 12.
Los Angeles officials who contracted Young said they were giving the animal a breather in hopes that a more relaxed gator would be easier to catch. "The gator is stressed, and we don't want him scared or sick," Young said.
They said Young will take at least a week off before he starts stalking the reptile again.
The 7-foot long alligator has drawn television crews and hundreds of onlookers trying to catch a glimpse of the reptile.
It was first spotted in Machado Lake, 20 miles south of downtown, on Aug. 12, said Ron Berkowitz, a supervisor with the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. The city hired Colorado alligator wrestler Jay Young for $800 a day to snare the animal, which may be a pet set free after getting too large, Berkowitz said.
Young's first attempts to net the alligator failed, hampered by the lake's size and vegetation. He will resume searching next week after suspending the hunt to give the reptile time to settle down, parks spokeswoman Jane Kolb said.
Young said he plans to capture the alligator by jumping on its back and slipping a noose over its head.
"That's the safest place to be," Young, 31, said in an interview. "Don't hesitate and don't let go." Until Young returns in a week or two, the city will put a fence around the lake and maintain 24-hour security to keep the alligator and public safe, Kolb said.
Young teaches alligator wrestling at the Colorado Gators roadside reptile attraction and fish farm in Mosca, Colorado, 250 miles south of Denver. He and fellow hunter Paul Wertz, 33, began their search of Machado Lake's 53 acres on Aug. 16.
Earlier this week, they got within eight feet of the creature before it slipped away, said Young, who wears a leather cowboy hat adorned with feathers and necklace made of alligator teeth.
"Jay has been described as the world's greatest gator wrangler," said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, whose district includes the park containing Machado Lake, citing Young's 20 years of experience. "He looks the part." Rescue The most effective way to capture an alligator is to shine a spotlight into its eyes at night, which stuns the animal, said Jeff Corwin, a wildlife biologist who hosts Corwin's Quest on the Animal Planet cable-television channel. Then a hunter can slip a rope around its neck.
"Once they find this alligator, in theory they could have it wrapped up in 10 minutes," Corwin said. "You ease up, slide the noose around the head, haul it into the boat, duct tape the mouth, and boom, you've wrangled yourself a gator." Some bystanders said they would like to see the alligator stay.
"It probably grew up here," said David Hull, 35, of Los Angeles, who stood on the lake's shore with his son, Dylan, 2.
"It hasn't bothered anybody." At its current size, the animal can survive on ducks and fish in the lake, said Michael Dee, general curator at the Los Angeles Zoo, who saw the creature this week on a visit to the lake in the Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park.
"It may lose some weight but its instincts would be to go for something that moves," Dee said.
'Dangerous to Dogs' Alligators grow as long as 14 feet, he said. The reptile could mistake a human for prey though attacks are rare, Dee said.
"It may then take a bite but would realize it's too big," Dee said. "But it could be dangerous to dogs at the water's edge." The Los Angeles Zoo has agreed to take the creature, dubbed "Harbor Park Harry" by the Los Angeles Times, and put it in quarantine to make sure it's healthy, Dee said. After 90 days, the reptile would be moved to a rescue center or alligator farm.
The Machado Lake animal needs help, said Jennifer O'Connor, a Norfolk, Virginia-based spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
"My first thoughts were, 'Yet another animal paying the price for human foolishness,"' O'Connor said. "Somebody was buying the poor guy when he was six inches long and then dumped him into this lake when he got bigger." Crowds Gather At least 200 people crowded around the lake on Aug. 17, ringed by seven television trucks from local stations. In Los Angeles, a city of 3.69 million, the alligator has made nightly newscasts and the front page of the Los Angeles Times.
"This is history," said Pearl Areyan, 32, of nearby Lakewood. Areyan, whose husband grew up near the park, brought her three children and one of their friends to watch the search.
"They should put a gate up and call it Alligator Park." Councilwoman Hahn said she has spotted the alligator on her daily trips to the park.
"He looks very big and his two eyes and snout stick out of the water, peering at you," she said.
Colo. gator hunter takes break

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