See You Later . . . : ‘Wally’ Finally Finds New Home

Wally the stray alligator has finally found a home. It wasn’t easy.

On Friday afternoon, four days after Harvey Fischer of the Los Angeles Zoo started calling zoos and reptile collectors, he said he had found “a very good place”--a pond owned by a herpetologist--where the 5 1/2-foot alligator can live peacefully, with two or three alligators his size.

“Wally,” apparently a pet alligator who long ago was dumped into Upper Newport Bay, was captured on an Irvine street Sunday after living at least three years off the birds and fish of the bay. He spent two days in a dog kennel at Irvine Animal Services, then was transferred Tuesday to the Los Angeles Zoo until permanent quarters could be found.

But most zoos, including Los Angeles’, weren’t interested in acquiring Wally.

Common Species

As a male American alligator, he was a common specimen, Fischer said, and his small size made him incompatible with other zoos’ 9- and 10-foot alligators; the larger alligators would probably have had him for lunch--literally.

Still, Fischer had promised Animal Services officials in Irvine that he would find a home for Wally, and on Friday he announced that he had done so.

Like most adoptions, the details of this one will remain confidential, Fischer said.

Within the next few weeks, he said, a Southern California herpetologist who wishes to remain anonymous will pick up Wally and take him home.

The hobbyist has promised to treat Wally like “just another alligator,” offering him a pond several feet deep, a place to bask in the sun and a diet of fish, chicken gizzards and an occasional rat, Fischer said.

There are about 50 alligators in Southern California, 20 of them “in private hands,” Fischer said, and Wally is about to join their ranks.

Wally’s future owner has put one condition on the adoption, Fischer said: “He’ll take it (Wally) if I don’t put out any noise about it.”

‘He Owes Me One’

Although the man likes alligators, he is also accepting Wally “because he owes me one,” Fischer said.

“He’s someone I’ve worked in close association with for a number of years,” Fischer said. “Rather than spending a lot of city money calling 20 zoos” that would not have wanted the small alligator, Fischer said that he had called his colleague and leaned on him a little. Eventually the man agreed to take Wally.

In addition to trying to locate a zoo or private reptile collection that would accept Wally, Fischer said that he had been fending off calls from “all kinds of oddballs” who wanted to adopt the alligator. One man said that he wanted to keep the alligator in his apartment, while two other would-be owners sounded like they wanted to eat Wally, Fischer said. As Fischer described the alligator, Wally would not have made much of a meal.

‘Could Be Stronger’

“I get the impression upon closer examination that he was probably not making a good living” off the small fish and shore birds in the Newport Bay.

Wally was “not fat, just average-to-lean. He could be 10 or 20% stronger,” Fischer said.

He should have an easier life at the zoo and, soon, at his permanent quarters with the herpetologist, Fischer said. For now, Wally was “resting peacefully” in the sun. That is all they do in cool seasons, Fischer said. They refuse to eat--and probably won’t eat again until May--and “they just kind of lie around, bask in the sun and swim from one end of the pool to the other.”