On a Scale of 1 to 10, This Wish Was, Well, a Bit Scaly

Asked to make a wish, Michael Abplanalp could have sought a meeting with a menacing football lineman or a trigger-happy movie idol.

But the 5-year-old Davis boy, who has been treated for leukemia, had a more coldblooded character in mind. And on Friday, his wish came true: He met Papa, a 6-foot Carson alligator that has faced some adversity of its own.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation, a nonprofit group that underwrites special events for children with serious illnesses, flew Michael to the Los Angeles area for his first face-to-face meeting with a live alligator. The group gets all kinds of requests, but this one raised some eyebrows.

“Most kids want to meet people like football players or rock stars or movie actors,” said Mark Choate, a local representative of the foundation. “But Michael wanted to meet an alligator. It was one of the more bizarre wishes we’ve had.”

For Michael, who became interested in these big reptiles by watching nature programs on television, any gator would have sufficed. But Papa was suggested to foundation officials because of his recent notoriety. The 24-year-old reptile was seized this spring when he was found living in Carson resident Nelvolia Collins’ back yard. Alligators are not on the city’s list of approved pets.

But the gator was returned amid a public outcry over his removal. Papa was judged to be legal because he had been Collins’ pet before a statewide ban on alligators took effect in 1987.

Hissing in his fenced-in wading pool at Collins’ Ackmar Avenue home, Papa drew fascinated stares from Michael, who did not let the thrill of the meeting cloud his common sense.

“Don’t stick your fingers in there,” he warned sternly. “He’s pretty mad right now.”

Michael’s parents, Hans and Nancy Abplanalp, said Friday’s meeting was significant because it came shortly after Michael completed taxing chemotherapy treatments for the leukemia he was found to have in 1988.

The youngster’s medical trouble is one of two tough challenges facing the couple. Their other child, Alex, 3, was found to have Down’s syndrome in 1988, just before Michael’s leukemia was diagnosed.

“Nineteen eighty-eight was our year of doom,” Nancy Abplanalp said. “I remember we were out in our boat at one point, saying ‘We can cope with this, that Alex has Down’s.’ Then Michael was diagnosed with leukemia 2 1/2 weeks later. It was devastating.”

But Alex is progressing well, she said, and now that Michael’s treatment is over, the family has hope.

“I look at him now and I think it’s all behind us,” she said, watching Michael stare wide-eyed through Papa’s chain-link fence. “We look at this day as a celebration.”

After the visit by the Abplanalps, Collins said maybe it was a good thing Papa had gotten his name in the news.

“If all that hadn’t happened to Papa, they wouldn’t have sent this child here,” said Collins, wearing an alligator-shaped earring and a gator-emblazoned sweat shirt. “This was beautiful.”