Workers for the parks services in New York City ended up shocking themselves, and a number of people nearby, when they wound up pulling out a four-foot-long alligator from Prospect Park Lake in Brooklyn this past Sunday morning.
The alligator in question had reportedly been spotted by a few visitors of the park early Sunday morning, floating around the surface of the lake in an area that is known to be popular with kids. The animal was severely lethargic, explained area officials, possibly in a state of shock due to the cold temperatures in the lake which did not meet those of the natural habitat for the animal.
Bring him south!! Poor guy!
Workers stunned as 4-foot alligator is hauled from Brooklyn's Prospect Park Lake https://t.co/fFHXoOoKYj
— Kerri Rawson (@KerriRawson) February 19, 2023
As expressed in a report which was put out on Sunday by Spectrum News NY1, the offending alligator was first taken to an animal care center and then transferred over to the Bronx Zoo. Reportedly, no one was hurt by the animal while it was in the park’s lake.
Local authorities seemed to suggest that the alligator could have possibly been someone’s pet at some point — and that the person had attempted to release it into the wild — and authorities made it a point to warn others against doing such a thing had they been tempted to go along with similar actions.
“Parks are not suitable homes for animals not indigenous to those parks-domesticated or otherwise. In addition to the potential danger to park goers this could have caused, releasing non-indigenous animals or unwanted pets can lead to the elimination of native species and unhealthy water quality,” explained one spokesperson for the department in a release, going on to add that such actions could end up being very dangerous for the animals in question as well.
The alligator, at the time it was pulled out of the lake, was “very lethargic and possibly cold shocked since it is native to warm, tropical climates.”
One man — who only offer the name Moses — stated to The New York Post, “If I saw that gator, I would have kicked it back in the water! You’d never expect to see something like that here. But man, I feel bad for it. It shouldn’t be in a lake. Animals are like people, you know?”
“What? An alligator?! OK … oh, my goodness,” expressed 37-year-old father Vijay Jacob in a statement to the Post. “That’s pretty terrifying since this part is a pretty kids-dominated section of the park. We come here a lot, but I’d never expect to see an alligator here. Maybe that’s why it’s so abandoned here today.”
