Village of North Prairie - Imagine being a police dispatcher and someone calls to report that a 2-foot-long alligator is crawling through his yard, heading toward the front door.

"That was the strangest thing - trying to convince the dispatcher that I wasn't nuts," said Henry Halon, who couldn't believe his eyes when he looked out a window of his second-story home at 207 Corby Drive early last Thursday morning and saw what appeared to be an alligator crawling within 10 feet of his front porch. After going outside and confirming the sighting, he quickly called police at about 8:30 a.m. "I said, 'Don't hang up, this is not a crank call. There is an alligator in my front yard,' " Corby said.

Village Police Sgt. Terry Tesch quickly responded to the scene, and he and Halon were soon able to construct a makeshift pen to corral the alligator, placing 8-inch boards on all sides of the reptile.

Neither Halon nor Tesch had any idea where the gator came from or how it made its way to the yard, but they were very sure they did not want to get friendly with it.

"It was about 2 feet long and very lethargic. He was apparently sunning himself after the cold of the night," Tesch was later told by a representative from the Humane Animal Welfare Society in Waukesha.

The gator then made a grunting noise and was able to crawl over the boards and continue strolling through Halon's lawn. Tesch chased the animal into a box that Halon uses to store the solar-panel cover for his swimming pool.

"That made it easy - he just crawled into the box. I lifted it up and put a board across the top of the box, and that was it," said Tesch, who added that the incident was over by about 9:30 a.m.

The alligator was transported to HAWS in Waukesha, where it remains this week, awaiting a call from his owner. Mark Hess, executive director at HAWS, said it is the first time he can recall housing an alligator. He also did not know where it came from, but confirmed that the reptile is an alligator, not a crocodile or caiman.

"There are some specialty shops in Florida that sell gators as pets. We will hold it under state statutes for a seven-day period. After that, I will probably turn it over to a veterinarian I know who works with these types of reptiles," said Hess, who stressed that he would not make the gator available for adoption by anyone in the general public.

"That would only perpetuate the problem, I think."

Halon believes the owner of the gator will not likely come forward, because exotic animals of this nature are not allowed to be kept as pets in North Prairie. He said his first thought when seeing the animal in his yard was not fear, but rather concern.

"My first thought was that I have neighbors across the street with two little girls, and there are other families with young kids in the area. You don't want something like this running around the neighborhood. I wanted to be sure (the alligator) didn't hurt itself or somebody else," he said.

"It was small enough that I'm sure it was more scared of us than we were of it. But we were not going to play Crocodile Hunter with it. That's for sure."

Hess said he does not condone keeping alligators as pets, even in communities where they are allowed by special permit.

"They continue to grow and become tough to handle. They can be a real problem. Most people are not prepared to handle and care for them," Hess said.

Once the novelty of owning a pet alligator wears off, Hess said, that is when animal neglect and even abuse can sometimes take over. "Everything is great until something happens. Either they become too expensive to feed or tough to care for."

The danger with alligators is not only that they could bite a person's arm or leg off. "There are silent dangers," Hess explained. "Some of these types of animals carry salmonella. What happens is people will handle the animal and then not wash their hands afterward, and the disease is transferred."

The national tragedy that has hit the United States puts an incident like this into perspective, Halon said. "With all the travesties last week, it's nice to have a problem like this."

• Story originally published by:
Kettle Moraine Index, Dousman / WI | Jim Flaherty - Sep 27.01

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