Abandoned Reptiles Get Gator Aid

With temperatures near 90 degrees in Chatsworth Wednesday, city animal control officers rushed to the rescue with “gator aid.”

A team of officers saved two adult alligators from a Chatsworth warehouse where they apparently had been abandoned by an exotic-animal dealer.

The pair--a male and a female, both nameless--were taken by horse trailer to the West Valley Animal Shelter, where workers began hosing them off hourly to keep their body temperatures down.

District Supervisor Tom Walsh said the pair had been left without care in bathtubs in the warehouse for “at least a few days, possibly longer.”

The landlord for the animal dealer called Los Angeles animal control officers after reclaiming his property and “finding the tenant had left a little something behind,” an Animal Regulation Department spokesman said.

Walsh said the department was uncertain of the identity of the dealer.

The female, 7 feet, 9 inches from the tip of her snout to the end of her four-foot tail, was taken to the Los Angeles Zoo, where she will join other reptiles on public display.

The male, who measures 9 feet, 10 inches and weighs 300 pounds, was not welcome at the zoo because he would have clashed with other males, a zoo spokesman said.

He will remain at the shelter until sold or given to another zoo or animal park, Walsh said.

Looking not the least bit grateful that he was not going to be turned into a woman’s purse or a designer belt, the male grudgingly posed for news photographers.

“He’s not grateful to us for rescuing him,” Walsh said. “Reptiles lack compassion. To him, we’re just a food item.”