Wally Is Offered a Swamp Away From Home

Lem Fortinberry motioned to a tank of reptiles beside the living room couch.

“That’s my babies there,” he said.

Four caimans--scaly, alligator-like creatures with beady eyes and pointed teeth--lay partly submerged atop one another in the water. Suddenly tails thrashed and jaws snapped as the Anaheim man stuck his hand in the tank and hauled out an 18-inch caiman named Percy.

“This here was 10 inches one month ago,” Fortinberry said as he held the flailing, open-mouthed caiman with a vise-like grip. “I feed ‘em well. Goldfish and chicken gizzards.”

Since Sunday, when Irvine police captured Wally, a 5 1/2-foot alligator who had been living in Newport Bay, the self-described “Gator-Man of Orange County” has been hoping that his dream of having an alligator for his very own could come true.

He said he has offered to adopt Wally. And if Wally is too big for Fortinberry’s Anaheim home, the reptile could stay in Corona, at a duck pond Fortinberry owns there.

As a young man, Fortinberry hunted alligators in the swamps of Louisiana. Now, at 51, the retired Coast Guard chief has a hobby that recalls his youth--raising caimans.

Although caimans are fun, he would really prefer to own the real thing--an alligator--Fortinberry explained as he played with his caimans Wednesday.

So far, however, officials from the state Department of Fish and Game and from the Los Angeles Zoo, which is temporarily keeping Wally, have spurned the offer.

Although they still need a home for Wally, it probably won’t be Fortinberry’s, officials said. For one thing, state officials have been seeking a zoo or professional reptile facility.

For another, “I have a feeling about these things,” the zoo’s curator of reptiles, Harvey Fischer, said.

When Fischer talked with Fortinberry about his “adopt-a-gator” plan Wednesday, “it seemed like he would like to make (alligator) stew,” Fischer said.

Fortinberry vehemently denied he wanted to eat the Newport Bay alligator. Though he enjoyed an alligator steak now and then, “I don’t eat my pets,” he said.

Besides, Fortinberry said, he could offer a better life for the alligator than any zoo would probably give it.

“I pamper ‘em. I feed ‘em good. I don’t think a zoo’s going to take care of ‘em like I would take care of ‘em,” he said. His six fast-growing caiman--four small ones in the living room tank, a three-footer in a tank in the dining room and a three-footer named Cajun in a fenced side yard outside--eat about $10 worth of gizzards and goldfish a day.

For all the attention he gives them, he doesn’t love the reptiles, Fortinberry stressed. “Love? No. You give them a lot of food. But you don’t give them love. You just walk around them and give them a lot of tender loving care--and you don’t get your hand too close.”

Fortinberry said he knows he’s odd to keep such vicious pets. But they’re better than watchdogs, he claimed. “They don’t bark. They don’t make a lot of mess. And nobody comes in the goddamn house.”

“My friends--they think I’m crazy,” the “Cajun gator-hunter” said. “But I’ve never been normal. There’s no fun in being a Baptist preacher.”