An apartment complex in Maryland is warning those who live there of a reptile on the loose. Officials say the loose creature may be an alligator.
In a letter to residents on Saturday, Clarissa Johnson with The Lighthouse at Twin Lakes apartment complex in Beltsville said animal control and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources have been contacted to try to trap the animal.
"Please be careful while entering and exiting your home. Please be mindful of your kids playing outside and while walking your pet(s)," Johnson wrote in the letter.
Alligators are not native to Maryland. According to the Smithsonian National Zoo, the American alligator is found in the United States from North Carolina to the Rio Grande in Texas. Alligators are usually found in freshwater, slow-moving rivers. They also live in swamps, marshes and lakes.
Male alligators are larger than female alligators. The average adult size for a female is 8.2 feet (2.6 meters), and the average size for a male is 11.2 feet (3.4 meters). Exceptionally large males can reach a weight of nearly half a ton or 1,000 pounds, the zoo said on its website.
While the apartment complex could not confirm whether the loose animal was in fact an alligator, they did say the animal has not yet been caught.
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Sal Icaza/Southern Maryland Chronicle Creature spotted in Lusby, MD |
A creature appears to be lurking in the waters of Lusby, Maryland, according to one local photojournalist who snapped a photo of what could be an alligator.
Sal Icaza with the Southern Maryland Chronicle spotted and took the picture Thursday, Sept. 15.
The Maryland publication stated the image has been sent to the Department of Natural Resources in the state for identification, and that original RAW files have been preserved for authentication. They added that the exact location is undisclosed until official substantiation.
WUSA9 reached out to the department, which confirmed that the photograph provides insufficient detail for them to confirm the species.
"We do know of alligators in the past found in that region -- having been illegally released into Maryland waters -- so it is possible," said a spokesperson.
Just last year, a father and son in Lusby spotted a 7.6-foot alligator in the weeds while on a Father's Day fishing trip in the Chesapeake Bay.
It's pretty clear by now that alligators can survive and grow in Southern Maryland waters. Whether they can breed is another question. First of all, we would need enough adult alligators that they have a reasonable chance of encountering another during breeding season. I have no doubt our summers are warm enough to support the breeding, and hatching of the baby gators, but would the baby gators have enough time to grow enough to handle a typical (let alone a cold) Maryland winter?
A long slithering creature was crawling below the surface of the waters stretching from Cape Henry to Cape Charles when the Captain of an anonymous ship peeped out to check what was causing the whiskering turbulence in the bay near Virginia Beach only to see that a creature with the head of an alien being probing above the rippling blue. The captain’s name was said to be Lawson.
Later in 1934, Francis Klarrman and his fellow fisherman, Edward J. Ward, could see something rumbling in the sea 75 yards from their fishing boat. The creature that was partially out of the water had pitch dark hide, with a horse head the size of a football and its visible body over 12 feet in length. Multiple times it twisted its head to its back to stare at the two men. None were privy to its origins, just that it wanders the Chesapeake Bay.
In the evening, at half past 7, Robert Frew had his friends over to his house to spend some fun time together in the May of 1982. While watching over the cerulean water, the group witnessed “Chessie”, forty feet long and wobbling through the high tide. It beat and struggled, and everyone in the house could have a clear view of it. It was absolutely real to them, and they could not avert their gaze until it disappeared into the darkness, but before it did, they wiped out their camera to catch it on film.
Robert did, a gritty video quality, but evidence nonetheless of that cryptid being that everyone was confessing to having seen but never had any proof of. The recording caught up with the American media but aired first on WJZ-TV. Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History agreed it to be an animate being, but they were not able to identify it. There was no credibility to the tale with the captain’s endeavor at Virginia Beach, but now, with technology, the locals and everyone in America began to trust the accounts.
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| Tuna |
After an American alligator was caught and killed by a hunter in Calvert County, Md., back in June, there is another alligator on the loose just one county away, in St. Mary’s.
News spread in late August that St. Mary’s County was investigating reports of an alligator in the town of Hollywood, which lies along the Patuxent River. A local wildlife rescue, Gentle Hands Wildlife, spotted the gator after initial reports of its existence surfaced a year earlier on social media.
County Director of Emergency Services Steve Walker says after the report a year ago, county officials did some looking, but couldn’t find a gator, and dismissed it for lack of credible evidence.
But then, Walker tells Bay Bulletin, Dave Edwards of Gentle Hands walked down to the pier in an area of Hollywood he goes to frequently, and “in between the pier and the boat was the alligator. Of course it felt the vibrations of him being there and it immediately submerged.”
Walker isn’t just taking Edwards’ word for it: there is photographic proof (that the county is hesitant to share for fear the gator’s location would be revealed and someone would target it). A county employee who is a drone enthusiast has a picture of the animal, which Walker estimates is about 8 feet.
Edwards has taken it upon himself to come up with a plan to trap the gator. But unlike the ill-fated 7.5-foot-long alligator trapped just north of Drum Point in Calvert County, this reptile would be relocated to Florida instead of killed. Edwards has authorization to capture the gator from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, but the agency stipulates it must be transported elsewhere.
So far, Edwards hasn’t been successful in catching it.
“He is actually seeing it fairly frequently but he just can’t get it trapped,” Walker says. The county could destroy the alligator, but it hasn’t posed any specific threat to humans so far, so Walker sees no need to at this time. “If it really did become a threat, it’s likely we would consider destroying it.”
Maybe they need some help from Nicole Spenc:
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| Nicole Spenc likes Alligators |
St. Mary’s County officials and a wildlife expert say they’re searching for an alligator that was reported in the area recently.
About a week and a half ago, officials in St. Mary’s County got a report of an eight-foot alligator roaming around.
According to county officials, they initially dismissed an alligator sighting in the area last year due to a lack of evidence.
A wildlife specialist, however, took an interest in the case, and recorded what they believe is credible video that could be showing an alligator.
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| So does Maria Meinke |
It’s not legal to own an alligator here, but officials believe it may have been someone’s pet and they released it back into the wild.
"The most important thing is that I don’t feel there’s a danger to the public. I think it’s fairly safe where it is. We’re not getting reports of pets missing or anything of that nature," said Steve Walker, Director of St. Mary’s County Emergency Services Department.
The county is working with a local wildlife group to capture the animal and take it to Florida.
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| And Amber Marchant |
"We think we’ve got a pretty good crew who’s doing it. There’s a local wildlife expert who is actually pursuing this and we are offering assistance to that person. He’s getting all the permitting for transporting the animal. We did provide some materials for him to build a trap," Walker said.
St. Mary’s County officials say they have never had a report of an alligator sighting in the area before so this is a first.
I'm not worried about 'gators, but its interesting to me that we've had two recent reports in our area. Most of the trafficked crocodilians are Caiman from South American, which fare poorly in our cold climate. But our native gators do survive the occasional frost in their native habitat, so what would prevent them from making a go of it here? Furthermore, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that these were not accidental or deliberate releases, but rather "rogue" animals that decided to wander away from southern climes, like Chessie the Manatee and found a northern home suitable. They're unlikely to get a breeding population together, but, given warmer temperatures, it could happen. I'd accept them in exchange for Bonefish and Tarpon.
The Wombat has both Rule 5 Sunday: Rabbit Season! posted at The Other McCain on time and under budget.
A Maryland man says he hunted and killed a nearly 8-foot alligator that was lurking near the Chesapeake Bay from a kayak with his son and then ate it.
The duo went out on Father’s Day and tracked down the gator, fearing it posed a danger to pets and humans, alligator hunter William Adams said.
“I’m from Maryland so I’m not used to that,” Adams said. “I knew that it shouldn’t be there and I needed to get it out of there.”
The alligator was found in a pond near Driftwood Beach, not far from Adams’ home in Lusby.
Alligators’ natural habitat doesn’t extend farther north than North Carolina, according to the National Zoo.
It’s unclear how the 7-foot, 6-inch gator ended up in Maryland. Adams thinks someone may have got it as a pet, then abandoned it. It is illegal to possess or purchase an alligator in Maryland.
But there were rumors of an alligator near the Chesapeake Bay as far back as 2016.
Adams said he was a little scared when he and his son went out on a kayak with chicken breasts hooked for bait. When the time was right, he says he used a crossbow to kill the alligator.
Adams plans to have the alligator skin mounted and ate the meat for dinner.
How did it taste?
“Really good,” with the taste of chicken and texture of beef, he said.
But with global warming, maybe we have chance. It would be a small price to pay for Tarpon.
The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Cottagecore Is The New Black on time and under budget at The Other McCain.
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| Luiza Barros |
An alligator is a crocodilian in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae. The two living species are the American alligator (A. mississippiensis) and the Chinese alligator (A. sinensis). Additionally, several extinct species of alligator are known from fossil remains. Alligators first appeared during the Oligocene epoch about 37 million years ago.
The name "alligator" is probably an anglicized form of el lagarto, the Spanish term for "the lizard", which early Spanish explorers and settlers in Florida called the alligator. Later English spellings of the name included allagarta and alagarto.
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| Back when Brooke Thomas fished |
An average adult American alligator's weight and length is 360 kg (790 lb) and 4 m (13 ft), but they sometimes grow to 4.4 m (14 ft) long and weigh over 450 kg (990 lb). The largest ever recorded, found in Louisiana, measured 5.84 m (19.2 ft). The Chinese alligator is smaller, rarely exceeding 2.1 m (7 ft) in length. Additionally, it weighs considerably less, with males rarely over 45 kg (100 lb).
American alligators are found in the southeast United States: all of Florida and Louisiana; the southern parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi; coastal South and North Carolina; East Texas, the southeast corner of Oklahoma, and the southern tip of Arkansas. According to the 2005 Scholastic Book of World Records, Louisiana has the largest alligator population. The majority of American alligators inhabit Florida and Louisiana, with over a million alligators in each state. Southern Florida is the only place where both alligators and crocodiles live side by side.
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| Vicky Stark |
American alligators live in freshwater environments, such as ponds, marshes, wetlands, rivers, lakes, and swamps, as well as in brackish water. When they construct alligator holes in the wetlands, they increase plant diversity and provide habitat for other animals during droughts. They are, therefore, considered an important species for maintaining ecological diversity in wetlands. Farther west, in Louisiana, heavy grazing by coypu and muskrat are causing severe damage to coastal wetlands. Large alligators feed extensively on coypu, and provide a vital ecological service by reducing coypu numbers.
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| Hannah Barron |
Famous last words:No, but I worried about them, a little, while wading in the local ponds fish for bass when we lived in Florida.
A woman who was attacked and killed by an alligator in a gated community in South Carolina on Friday was trying to touch the animal when it grabbed her and dragged her underwater, authorities said today.
After briefly getting away from the alligator, the woman stood in waist deep water in the Kiawah Island pond and said ‘I guess I wont do this again,’ but the alligator grabbed her in its jaws again and took her under the water, according to a supplemental police report released Tuesday.
Cynthia Covert, 58, died of drowning before Charleston County deputies and firefighters were able to shoot and kill the alligator and use poles to get her out of the pond, authorities said.
Animal lover Covert came to Kiawah Island, a gated community southeast of Charleston, to give the homeowner a manicure Friday, according to the police report.
The woman told deputies Covert typically was professional in her salon, but was relaxed and excited at the home, talking about her boyfriend’s visit from Tennessee, and brought a glass of wine with her.
The Queen of all Florida Women has finally revealed herself. When the pickup she was riding in was pulled over for failing to stop at a stop sign, the 25-year-old opened up a backpack full of 43 turtles and pulled a live alligator out of her pants, reports NBC2 News.
A Florida man was arrested along with three others last Sunday by a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation officer for allegedly picking hallucinogenic mushrooms in the Little Big Econ State Wildlife Management Area in Seminole County, Florida while also carrying a 2-foot-long alligator in his backpack.As they say, go big or go home!
30-year-old Rick Myers, of Titusville, Florida, was charged with possessing an American Alligator without a permit, possessing the psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms that are often referred to as "shrooms" or "magic mushrooms," felony violation of probation, and removing natural resources from a Wildlife Management Area.
Another Brevard County man, 22-year-old Gregory Sansota of Titusville, was also arrested along with Tyler Salzman, age 20 of Deltona, Florida. Both of the young men were charged with possessing the psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms and removing natural resources from a Wildlife Management Area. An unidentified juvenile was among those arrested.
A fourth man fled the scene, but was later arrested by a Seminole County Sheriff's deputy.
A man who ran into a Lakeland lake to escape from police had three quarters of his arm bitten off by an alligator in the lake, police said on Thursday.
Officers responded to a home on Long Lake Circle at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday after receiving a call about a disturbance. A Lakeland Police Department spokesperson said that a mother called and said her son, age, 21, needed psychological help and was having an episode at the time.
When police arrived, the victim fled into the lake. At 9:52 p.m., the sheriff’s office helicopter spotted the man lying on the ground at 5026 Long Lake Circle. He told deputies he knew law enforcement was looking for him so he swam back across the lake to this location. A sign was posted where he exited the lake that read “Caution! Alligators frequent this area!”
“The cops were looking for him and it got pretty rough before he left and next thing I know, probably about 45 minutes later, I got a text from my wife saying I hear screaming out here,” said Taylor.
In Florida, there are worse things than the cops.
He ran to the lake and saw his the victim on the ground.
“My neighbor was out here saying are you okay? What’s going on? Is everything all right? I say, is that you? He says, yeah. He says a gator got me,” said Taylor
Taylor couldn’t believe what he saw next.
“I said, what’s wrong man? He says, my hand hurts. I said which hand is it? He lifts it up and there is no hand there at all,” said Taylor. . .
A Jupiter man was arrested for throwing a live alligator into a Wendy’s restaurant drive-through east of Loxahatchee, according to our news partners at WPTV News Channel 5.
Joshua James, 23, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, illegally killing, possessing or capturing an alligator, and second-degree larceny petit theft, according to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office.
He has not been released on bail as of Monday afternoon. WPTV reports that the incident occurred in October, but James had only been arrested recently by U.S. Marshals.
Officials with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission told WPTV that James pulled up for his order, and after a server handed a drink and turned around, James tossed the 3 1/2-foot gator into the drive-through window.
