Alligator

A two-foot alligator was found - and captured - in Gloucester Township as residents cleaned up in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene this afternoon. A resident of the Lakeview Apartments spotted the reptile underneath a bridge behind one of the complex's buildings by nearby lake. By the time police arrived, the resident caught the alligator and taped its mouth shut to keep it from biting anyone. The Department of Environmental Protection was notified, police said. Animal Control officers have taken the alligator into custody.

A two-foot alligator was found and captured in Gloucester Township as residents cleaned up in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene on Sunday. A resident of the Lakeview Apartments on Lower Landing Road spotted the reptile under a bridge behind one of the apartment complex buildings near a lake. By the time police arrived, the resident had caught the alligator and taped its mouth shut to keep it from biting. The Department of Environmental Protection was notified, police said.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Bethlehem police say they captured a 3-foot-long alligator after a resident spotted it going over a waterfall. Police say the alligator hid in deep water beneath the falls in the Monocacy Creek several times before Officer Eric Yeakel captured it Sunday. A local reptile expert confirmed it was an alligator and took it to a reptile store for treatment. Bethlehem police are seeking the public's help in determining how it ended up in the creek. - AP

BOYERTOWN, Pa. - Authorities have captured the second alligator in two weeks in a Douglass Township creek. "I have no idea where they are coming from," Harry D. Brown III, executive director of the Animal Rescue League of Berks County, said Tuesday. A woman jogging Tuesday afternoon spotted the three-foot alligator on a rock in Ironstone Creek, near where one was captured July 17, and called police. "I poked him a few times to get him to lift his head, and then I used a catch pole to put a line around his neck so he wouldn't get away," Brown said.

Sioux trick rope dancing and alligator wresting are among the events scheduled this weekend when Native Americans from more than 40 tribes throughout North and South America gather at the Rankokus Indian Reservation in Westampton for the fifth annual Juried American Indian Arts Festival. "We're the largest arts festival this side of Sante Fe," said Chief Roy Crazy Horse, the leader of the Powhatan-Renape Nation. The festival is aimed at showing the public the contributions that Native Americans are making to the arts.

A SWAT team from the FBI knew better than to bite off more than it could chew when it began searching a house in Yardley, Bucks County, for evidence of drug-dealing. There, in the basement of the $250,000 residence, agents found an alligator. The unidentified agents looked at the creature closely enough to determine that it was about four feet, four inches long, and appeared to be as friendly - or hostile - as alligators generally are. That look also was sufficient to persuade the agents to leave the alligator just where it was - locked in a pen made of the type of wire used to encage turkeys.

At first, it looked like a log. Then the alligator flicked its tail. And for a family of four crossing the shallows of Wissahickon Creek, the lush surroundings of Fairmount Park seemed like a jungle. Except this was Philadelphia, and the father had a cellular phone. "I was sure it was some wackball playing a joke," said Cpl. David Eberle, who took the call. "Then I got down there, and I saw it move. " That was about 1 p.m. The family, who did not want to be identified, decided to take their picnic down the road, Eberle said.

Philadelphia police yesterday morning collared an errant alligator that had been roaming the streets of Wynnefield unaccompanied. Answering a call shortly after 3 a.m. that a wandering reptile had been spotted near Bryn Mawr and Wynnefield Avenues, Officers Lisa Jones-Mahoney and Yolaina Washington stopped the young gator - weighing about 45 pounds and measuring about 2 1/2 feet long - and took it into custody. "Thank God it was 3 a.m. as opposed to broad daylight, when there were more people around," said Police Inspector William Colarulo, who did not say whether the animal appeared to be well-fed or hungry.

UPDATE: Fox 29 reporter Chris O'Connell was attacked on live TV while reporting on a bizarre South Philadelphia hoarding incident on the "10 o'clock News. " His attacker was arrested at the scene. O'Connell sent out a message on his Twitter account Tuesday night saying that he was OK. "Thanks for all the thoughts on the incident tonight. Photog Dave Edwards and I are ok. Never a dull moment in TV news," he tweeted. A "menagerie" of animals, both living and dead, were being pulled from the house on Shunk Street near 7th, including a living alligator and a dead iguana.

A fisherman reeled in an unusual catch Tuesday at a Gloucester County pond: a 26-inch American alligator. The gator, found at Franklinville Lake in Franklin Township, was turned over to the Gloucester County Animal Shelter. According to shelter director Bill Lombardi, the gator was likely dropped in the lake by someone who could no longer care for it. It was the second alligator found in South Jersey in six months. A two-foot gator was pulled from beneath a bridge near a lake in Gloucester Township.

A two-foot alligator was found and captured in Gloucester Township as residents cleaned up in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene on Sunday. A resident of the Lakeview Apartments on Lower Landing Road spotted the reptile under a bridge behind one of the apartment complex buildings near a lake. By the time police arrived, the resident had caught the alligator and taped its mouth shut to keep it from biting. The Department of Environmental Protection was notified, police said.

A two-foot alligator was found - and captured - in Gloucester Township as residents cleaned up in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene this afternoon. A resident of the Lakeview Apartments spotted the reptile underneath a bridge behind one of the complex's buildings by nearby lake. By the time police arrived, the resident caught the alligator and taped its mouth shut to keep it from biting anyone. The Department of Environmental Protection was notified, police said. Animal Control officers have taken the alligator into custody.

UPDATE: Fox 29 reporter Chris O'Connell was attacked on live TV while reporting on a bizarre South Philadelphia hoarding incident on the "10 o'clock News. " His attacker was arrested at the scene. O'Connell sent out a message on his Twitter account Tuesday night saying that he was OK. "Thanks for all the thoughts on the incident tonight. Photog Dave Edwards and I are ok. Never a dull moment in TV news," he tweeted. A "menagerie" of animals, both living and dead, were being pulled from the house on Shunk Street near 7th, including a living alligator and a dead iguana.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Bethlehem police say they captured a 3-foot-long alligator after a resident spotted it going over a waterfall. Police say the alligator hid in deep water beneath the falls in the Monocacy Creek several times before Officer Eric Yeakel captured it Sunday. A local reptile expert confirmed it was an alligator and took it to a reptile store for treatment. Bethlehem police are seeking the public's help in determining how it ended up in the creek. - AP

The students were told to bring in an unusual ingredient, or a dish made with one, and for Justin Graham, that had to be alligator. "I had it once in Florida when I was 7 or 8," said Graham, 21 now and a senior at St. Joseph's University on City Avenue. He arranged for a friend to drive up from Louisiana with alligator tail packed in a cooler and proceeded, sans recipe, to make spicy alligator popcorn. (Flavor some flour with lemon pepper; dust cubes of alligator meat; deep-fry in a wok or whatever.

I like the rounded photo against the chunky black border, as if the poster image of Johnny Knoxville on the Jet Ski is a slide on a Kodak carousel in a high school AV presentation. The broken and shattered pieces of whatever the Jet Ski just crashed through is a nice touch, too. And the crisscrossed crutches under the skull (a symbol created for the original MTV series almost a decade ago), is a knowing wink to the kind of bodily damage stunts like these inflict on Knoxville and his slapstick band of 21st century pirates.

One week after a 4-foot alligator was snared in a Trenton pond, a much larger cousin was caught in Allentown. Early Wednesday afternoon, a passerby reported seeing a 6-foot gator sunning itself on the bank of Jordan Creek in a park with a playground, basketball courts, and baseball fields. "We formulated a little bit of a plan," said Police Capt. Stephen Mould. "I think it was based primarily on what we watched with The Crocodile Hunter" - the TV series hosted by Steve Irwin before the Aussie was killed by a stingray's barb.

The Trenton alligator was snared yesterday. A check of traps set by New Jersey wildlife experts at a Stacy Park pond found the four-foot-long reptile, whose presence caused a children's fishing tournament to be canceled last weekend. Apparently, chicken legs and chicken livers did the trick - along with a bigger trap, said Darlene Yuhas, spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. Chicken wings - "without the sauce" - didn't work a couple of weeks ago, after the first sightings, she said.