Alligators don’t stay cute for long
MAMAKATING – Two three- to four-foot-long alligators are bound for new homes after a Mamakating woman turned them over to the State Department of Environmental Conservation.
The woman called the DEC wishing to turn over the gators that she and her son had been raising as pets.
When DEC Conservation Officers Tom Koepf and Mary Grose spoke with the woman at her home, she said she had caught one of the gators while fishing in Florida two years ago and that her son had purchased the other online from an unknown source. They wanted to give them away because they were getting too big and difficult to care for.
Officers issued tickets to mother and son for illegally possessing live crocodilia.
An animal rehabilitator took the gators off the woman’s hands and is now looking for a good home for the animals, possibly in a zoo or educational center.
