DAILY BREEZE (Torrance, California) 16 October 05 See ya later, alligator! T-Bone is leaving town - Louisiana wrangler goes from Reggie "ain't gettin' away" to deciding to go away himself as the loose alligator's semi-hibernation nears. Two other wranglers have tried and failed to snag Reggie. Now what? (Donna Littlejohn)
And the winner is: Reggie.
Two weeks after vowing that Harbor City's now mythic alligator "ain't gettin' away," wrangler Thomas "T-Bone" Quinn said Friday he's calling it quits.
Reggie, it seems, got away after all.
"Basically, I'm shutting down," Quinn said. "I'm probably leaving Sunday."
Quinn is the third gator wrangler to take a turn at trying to catch the elusive alligator that was dumped into Machado Lake last summer by his former owner.
So far, the gator has managed to vanquish them all.
Quinn, 47, a displaced Hurricane Katrina evacuee from Louisiana, has been living in a privately donated recreational vehicle in the park.
He used to hunt alligators in Louisiana for profit and volunteered his time and expertise to help catch Reggie as a way to show his gratitude to Los Angeles for offering him shelter.
But it's been more than a week since he's even seen the 6-foot-long reptile, Quinn said. And with cooler temperatures ahead, experts say the cold-blooded alligator will be slowing down and slipping into a semi-hibernation state, eating and moving around very little until spring arrives.
"I knew we had a window of time where we had nice warm weather, but it didn't work," Quinn said of his two weeks on the job. "We're not going to get Reggie this year."
Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn said Quinn braced her for the decision last weekend. "He said, 'I hate to break it to you,' and then told me he thought we had about another week before he thought the weather was going to change," Hahn said. "But he was going to give it one more try."
Quinn was hopeful that a donated hovercraft boat -- a rubber vessel that can skim over floating vegetation -- would do the trick. But the boat turned out to be inoperable and a promised missing part never arrived.
So, Quinn said, "I'm folding up" camp.
He said he'll head back to the Dream Center, the Los Angeles shelter he had been living in after evacuating from Louisiana.
"I've got no place else to go," he said.
But all is not lost, he said.
With the help of a downtown law firm, Quinn managed to set up an online foundation to collect donations for hurricane victims.
"He might not have caught Reggie, but I think Reggie really helped T-Bone raise awareness of Hurricane Katrina victims," Hahn said. "He was able to help raise money for victims, so in that way I'm happy our paths have crossed and I wish him nothing but the best."
And what about Reggie?
"The zoo thinks they might still have a chance to capture him in his den, so we'll let them continue to focus on that," Hahn said. "But all the experts expect him at some point to go into this semi-hibernation state so we may not see him until next spring. We may just have to wait. We'll keep the signage up and make sure people know there's a live alligator in the lake and everybody will respect his sleeping time."
Since the alligator's presence in the 53-acre lake was confirmed Aug. 12, Hahn and other city and parks officials have been determined to capture Reggie alive so he could be taken to a zoo or refuge.
Alligator wranglers from Colorado and Florida made three separate attempts to catch the wily creature before Quinn was commissioned.
Quinn came on board Sept. 28. Surrounded by television cameras and spectators as he arrived at the park, the heavily tattooed pipe fitter was serenaded by Lisa Haley and the Zydekats, a Cajun band that performed a foot-stomping, specially written tribute to Reggie and T-Bone.
"I'm going to stay here till I get Reggie," Quinn declared at the time, adding that it might take at most a week.
Hahn said she's still hopeful the alligator can be removed safely from the lake, which is heavily polluted.
"I don't think it's healthy for Reggie to be there," she said.
"I think this is the first problem I've ever had that I couldn't solve so that's been something, to know I honestly can't solve this problem," Hahn said. "That's been frustrating. I still wish it had never happened and I hope the message will go out warning people who have exotic animals, or any (unwanted) pets, that Lake Machado is just not a dumping ground."
After T-Bone packs up Sunday, he said he plans to take Hahn and some of her aides out for dinner at the 710 Grill in San Pedro, where a new item has just been added to the menu -- The Reggie Burger ($6.95).
"It looks a lot like turkey and they say it tastes like chicken, but it's alligator (meat) from Louisiana," said one of the waitresses who confessed she hasn't tried one herself.
"I'm more a cheeseburger and fries kind of girl," she said. "But a lot of people have been ordering it."
See ya later, alligator! T-Bone is leaving town