ASBURY PARK PRESS (Neptune, New Jersey) 02 September 05 Gator from New Orleans may have lost his home - Rare Animal May Wind Up Staying At Jersey Shore Aquarium
Photo at URL: Thibodaux, a rare white alligator relaxes at Jenkinson's Aquarium in Point Pleasant Beach, where he is on loan from a New Orleans aquarium.
Point Pleasant Beach (AP): A rare white alligator from New Orleans who's been summering in a Jersey Shore aquarium will be staying put as his handlers try to figure out what to do with him.
Thibodaux, who was to be returned next month to an aquarium in the now-ravaged city, is one of only 10 white alligators in the world.
First loaned to Jenkinson's Aquarium in 2003, the animal was back again this summer, and was to return to the Audubon Nature Institute of New Orleans the first week in October. But that facility was likely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, said Linelle Smith, Thibodaux's keeper and the senior aquarist at Jenkinson's.
She has been trying without success to reach a friend who works at the New Orleans aquarium, to see if he is all right and how the aquarium and its animals fared.
"Because it's surrounded by water, there had to have been flood damage," she said.
Smith has been monitoring an Internet site set up by aquariums and zoos around the country where information is circulated about how Gulf Coast aquariums fared. A message posted about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday said Thibodaux's home had not yet suffered any deaths of animals, but virtually the entire staff had to leave because of a mandatory evacuation order. Only its CEO stayed behind with the animals, according to the posting.
"Nobody really knows what's going on," Smith said.
As for Thibodaux, he can stay in Point Pleasant Beach as long as he needs to, she said.
Thibodaux is a leucistic alligator, born with an extremely rare color mutation that deprives the animal of normal pigmentation.
He's not an albino; such animals lack all pigment and have pink eyes and a yellowish body tint. Thibodaux, pronounced "TIB'-uh-doh" after a town near where he was found in Louisiana, is bright white and has bright blue eyes.
He is worth well in excess of $1 million.
Complicating his situation in New Jersey is the fact three other, normally tinted alligators, who have been on loan to the Cape May County Zoo this summer, and will be coming home.
Gator from New Orleans may have lost his home