Hey, Florida, Detroit Fears Alligators, Too

A tiny alligator was captured in Detroit Friday – and they’re not as rare here as you might think. (Screenshot via WDIV-TV)

This might not be a big deal in Florida, where nutty tales about an alligators are as regular as sunshine, but in Detroit, it’s kind of a big deal when one gets loose.

Alligator sightings don’t happen every day here. But neither are they so rare that animal control officers called to remove an alligator from a fenced yard in southwest Detroit Friday didn’t know how to wrestle it, according to a WDIV-TV report.

The alligator was relatively small.

One of the officers involved said told the TV station Friday wasn’t the first time he had been called to capture an alligator or crocodile. Others have been about the same size as Friday’s problematic little gator – comparatively speaking, anyway, given the size of the monster alligators and crocodiles that terrorize the Sunshine State.

That’s not to say all the gators around here are diminutive reptiles the size of a really big chameleon.

“Just Fell in Love with the Crocodiles”

Across the border in Toronto earlier this month, a man asked for help with his out-of-control population of about 150 alligators and crocodiles – some as long as 9 feet long, and the smallest a third that size.

Bry Loyst of the Indian River Reptile Zoo in Ontario told CBC Radio’s “Metro Morning” program he was flabbergasted by the sheer size of the man’s alligator and crocodile population.

“I could not believe that somebody had that many crocodilians and raised them to adulthood. These were not little baby crocodiles,” he said. “They were adults.”

Officials think the man was harboring the reptiles as part of a business, but “he just fell in love with the crocodiles and kept them as pets,” Loyst told the radio station.

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The reptiles found a new home at the Indian River Reptile Zoo, which is building a $1 million facility to house large reptiles. After Loyst and his staff took custody of the crocs, the man reportedly made “an extremely large” donation to the facility.

Former Lions Safety Lost His Mojo

Last year, an alligator made it into an area where children play on Detroit’s west side, and in 2013, former Detroit Lions safety Louis Delmas gave up Mojo, his pet alligator, after it grew too large.

Delmas had received an alligator egg from a former teammate in his rookie season. By the time the alligator was 5, it had grown to 6 feet and was cramped in the 36-square-foot container in Delmas’ basement.

“That gator ate my refrigerator dry,” Delmas told MLive.com.

In July 2012, a fugitive alligator slid into the Detroit River after its partner was captured by animal-control officers who had been called to deal with the rogue reptiles. A man across the border in Canada apparently lured the alligator on the lam into a net, using sardines as bait.

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Around Christmastime that year, 5-foot-long alligator was dumped in an abandoned lot on Detroit’s west side during frigid temperatures. Shontez Gibson saw the whole thing go down. The gator was so large Gibson thought a body was being dumped.

He and his uncle decided to rescue it. They kept the alligator warm with a space heater and fed it fish until the Michigan Humane Society took it to its Rochester Hills facility.

There’s nothing in Michigan law that prohibits people from owning alligators.