See You Lator, Gator — Jun 1st 2007

By Dakota Smith

After two years on the lam, a Los Angeles alligator named Reggie remains quarantined at Los Angeles Zoo while city officials test his health. The six-and-half foot alligator was taken into captivity earlier this month after wildlife experts and park rangers captured the reptile at Lake Machado, a 50-acre lake in the southwestern Los Angeles. According to news reports, the alligator was ambushed while sunning himself on the banks of the lake.

"He is acting pretty shy," said Russ Smith, the zoo's curator of reptiles. Although he has a handful of micro-habitats to choose from, Reggie is spending most of his time in the six-by-ten-foot pool in the quarantine area. Likely Reggie is a bit shell-shocked after being captured and "alligators feel most comfortable in the water," noted Smith.

Raised in the backyard pool of a suburban house in Los Angeles, the alligator was tossed into Lake Machado in summer 2005 by his owner (an ex-cop would eventually face jail time for keeping exotic, illegal animals) after outgrowing his pool.

The alligator's unlikely presence in Lake Machado made him an instant celebrity. Crowds and vendors hawked t-shirts reading You'll Never Catch Me (and the Spanish version: Nunca Me Encontrarant), while a local author penned a children's book, Reggie: The LA Gator, about a lonely alligator who eventually makes friends with other lake creatures.

By the fall of 2005, city officials had hired a crew from Florida's Gatorland--led by alligator wrangler Tim Williams---to try and capture Reggie. Meanwhile, Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn also invited Thomas "T-Bone" Quinn, a recent New Orleans evacuee of Hurricane Katrina and a self-professed alligator wrangler, to do the job.

Tensions quickly arose between the two groups. Quinn criticized the Gatorland crew's use of pontoon boats as "retarded," and Williams responded by calling Quinn a "swamp rat." Both parties quickly packed up and left; according to the Los Angeles Times, Quinn was later arrested on a parole violation.

"The incident embarrassed the city," says one inside source. The city got more attention that fall when Aussie crocodile hunter Steve Irwin visited the lake, and promised to return and capture the gator. (Irwin would die in a filming accident before he could return to Los Angeles.)

By November 2005, Reggie had dropped out of sight. City officials presumed the alligator had gone into hibernation, burying himself in the mud for the winter. But when Reggie didn't surface the following spring, it was believed he had died or climbed into one of the lake's water drains.

But in late April of this year--eighteen months after Reggie was last spotted--a park ranger saw an alligator swimming across the lake. Once again, Lake Machado was cordoned off with yellow tape to hold back locals, many of whom wanted the gator to be allowed to stay in the lake. "I know it's a liability, but I don't think he would hurt anyone," said Bob Hanek, 61, standing on the pier in early at the lake in early May watching Reggie swim.

Showing off cell-phone pictures of the alligator he'd taken the night before, Hanek was joined by about a dozen people. On this night, Reggie briefly surfaced about every 20 minutes, his boxy snout and glistening eyes visible to onlookers. His appearance caused the crowd to quiet down, the silence lasting just until Reggie slid under the water again. (Check out NewsQuake's DIY footage of Reggie.).

Reggie's recent freedom would be short-lived. While city officials debated flying in Irwin's former Australian crocodile team to retrieve Reggie, a commando team of park rangers and wildlife experts managed to capture the alligator in late May. According to news reports, the team snared the reptile by putting a hook around his neck, covering his eyes with a t-shirt, and duct-taping Reggie's snout.

Strapped to a board and put in a van, Reggie was transported to Los Angeles Zoo with a police escort, while helicopters flew overhead, broadcasting live footage of the motorcade. "You would have thought it was the president being driven through Los Angeles," noted one city official.

Once Reggie has been quarantined at the Los Angeles Zoo for at least 30 days, city officials will decide whether to keep the reptile or send him to another facility, either in California or another state. But given his notoriety--and local affection for the Reggie--it's likely that the Los Angeles Zoo will keep the gator and build a larger, separate accommodation for him.

Already, Los Angeles Zoo houses a pair of full-size American Alligators. Additionally, four smaller alligators live in the zoo--all those reptiles were previously owned by the same ex-cop who threw Reggie in the lake. Three of the smaller reptiles were confiscated from the man's house, while the fourth, dubbed "Little Reggie," was retrieved from the Wilmington Drains, an outlet of Lake Machado, in September 2005.

For his part, curator Smith dismisses any concerns that Reggie would be more comfortable living back in Lake Machado. "He has no predators, food given to him, his own health care, and clean water," said Smith. "It's a penthouse life."

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