By Melissa Dunson
mdunson@joplinglobe.com
CARTHAGE, Mo. — After picking up peacocks, snakes and a herd of horses, Justin Butler, Carthage animal-control officer, thought he had seen it all.
But when he was called Monday morning to a Carthage home, he found a 6 1/2-foot-long American alligator in the basement.
The pet gator was discovered when Carthage police responded at 6:04 a.m. to what is being investigated as an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at a home on the west side of town, according to police Sgt. David Strubberg.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Butler said. “It’s not every day you find a gator in someone’s basement.”
Butler said his training is mostly in dealing with domestic animals, and an alligator was a little out of his comfort zone, so he called in two zookeepers from the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield. They drove a zoo van to Carthage, covered the alligator’s eyes with a towel, taped its mouth shut and carried it upstairs.
The alligator, dubbed Wally by the Carthage Humane Society staff, is being housed in a makeshift cage at a building next door to the shelter, currently being referred to as “the gator barn.”
“It’s definitely something different than I’ve ever come across before,” Butler said. “I’ve seen snakes and peacocks and horses, but never a gator. I’m ready for somebody to call me now with an elephant in their back yard.”
David Butler, manager of the Carthage shelter, said the Humane Society and the Police Department are working to find a permanent home for the alligator, possibly the Riverside Reptile Ranch in Stanton. He said the gator should be gone by the end of the week.
Some cities, including Carthage, have ordinances that prohibit keeping exotic animals such as alligators as pets. But David Illig, a senior zookeeper who oversees reptiles at the Dickerson Park Zoo, said that since the American alligator was taken off the endangered-species list in 1987, it has become common to sell the babies in pet stores and outdoor markets.
Illig, who helped wrangle the Carthage gator Monday, said the Springfield zoo couldn’t accept the animal because there isn’t room for all of the pet alligators that Southwest Missourians want to surrender.
“People buy them as babies for $100 apiece, and then in two years they are 2 feet long, and people want to donate them to the zoo,” Illig said. “I’d probably have 100 of them if I did that, so the people turn them loose into the area lakes. They do OK in the summer, but most of them die during the winter.”
Illig said it’s a big problem that’s growing faster than the alligators themselves. He said some people do care for their exotic pets, but a lot of people buy them not knowing what they are getting into.
David Butler said the alligator is estimated to be 6 or 7 years old. This is the first time the Carthage Humane Society has housed an alligator, he said, and the staff members have been figuring out how to care for it as they go along.
“We’ve given him some raw chicken, but he hasn’t really eaten yet,” he said. “We also gave him a kiddie wading pool, and he’s already put a couple of holes in it. This is the weirdest thing we’ve ever had here.”
He said a 3 1/2-foot-long dead crocodile also was found stored in a freezer at the residence.
Investigation
Carthage police Sgt. David Strubberg said the possible suicide that led to the discovery of the pet alligator remains under investigation.
