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Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 23:04:22 -0700
From: Andrew Gach <UncleWolf@worldnet.att.net>
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: Alligator evades capture
Message-ID: <33AF6366.6227@worldnet.att.net>
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Atlanta alligator fights trappers to draw
Reuter Information Service
DOUGLASVILLE, Ga (June 23, 1997 6:44 p.m. EDT) - Freed pet or wild
reptile? State officials are not sure why a seven-to-nine-foot alligator
has turned up in an Atlanta suburb hundreds of miles north of Georgia's
more hospitable warm marshes.
They only know they are losing a battle of wits with it.
The animal has been playing hide-and-seek with a team of wildlife
officials since Saturday, when a 6-year-old boy spotted it in a private
one-acre pond in Douglasville, a town 35 miles west of
Atlanta, and ran to tell his family.
"Of course, nobody believed him at first," his grandmother said later.
Since then, as Georgia gamekeepers admitted Monday, the alligator has
defeated their best-laid traps, slipping out of nets, evading nooses and
ignoring a free lunch of raw chicken.
About a dozen officials, including police, have been stationed near the
pond to make sure the beast cannot escape and to help control scores of
gawkers. On Monday four television camera trucks from Atlanta also took
up position while a news helicopter buzzed overhead.
"We're trying to capture an alligator in a part of the state in which we
don't have the right kind of equipment and habitual expertise," Larry
McSwain, assistant director of the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division,
said.
"The crowd problems, the disturbance problems and not having the
equipment on hand has resulted in some unsuccessful attempts to catch
the alligator. And, of course, that creates a more wary animal," he
said.
Officials believe someone nearby probably meant to raise it as a pet and
turned it loose when it grew too big. But they say it is older and
larger than most 'gators that have been given the gate. Some experts
think it could herald a northward push by the Southeast's growing
alligator population.
State reinforcements were being called in from south Georgia Monday for
