Largest captive alligator in US spends goes missing in Storm Imelda floods at height of hunting season

Some people can’t sleep if they know there’s a spider in their house.

Imagine being in Beaumont, Texas, and thinking that the largest alligator ever caught in the United States was on the loose.

Fortunately, after a nerve-racking few days, that creature has been found.

It was a tense week for neighbours of Gator Country, the “largest alligator adventure park/sanctuary in Southeast Texas.”

The Beaumont facility, hard hit by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, found itself inundated by floodwaters again as the remnants of Tropical Storm Imelda dumped 43 inches of rain in the area.

When the water finally started to recede earlier this week, “Big Tex” – a 14-foot, 1,000-pound behemoth – was missing, along with roughly three dozen other gators.

Adjacent neighbourhoods went to sleep at night knowing the nation’s largest alligator in captivity could be lurking nearby.

When there’s an alligator on the loose, who do you call? John Walton.

Dr Walton runs the alligator program for Texas Parks and Wildlife.

A Midwest native, Dr Walton holds a PhD he earned for studying in Africa about how alligators can serve as indicators of an ecosystem’s health.

“We were unsure he had even escaped,” Dr Walton said. “But when the water level went down, Big Tex wasn’t there.”

Dr Walton said that if the gator had left the premises, “he’d probably stay in the immediate vicinity”. And on Friday afternoon, Big Tex was found near a pond on the 15-acre sanctuary’s property.

Gator Country confirmed he had been located early on Friday afternoon and was “being moved back.”

A number of small alligators are still missing, but those are “mostly just three-, four- and five-footers,” Dr Walton said. “They probably just swam over the fence.”

Dr Walton said Gator Country is at “80 percent capacity” in locating the reptiles that were initially reported missing after Imelda’s drenching.

In the wake of major storms, it’s not unusual for animals to wind up in places they wouldn’t otherwise be.

When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in 2017, about 50 gators were captured after springing loose from Gator Country, the Beaumont Enterprise reported. Flooding had caused the water to rise above the four-foot fences.

In a separate incident, deputies had to wrangle one gator out of a house. A photo from the incident showed the scaly animal lounging on a rug.

Imelda drew plenty of comparisons to Harvey as it walloped some of the same areas with severe flooding that stranded residents and triggered thousands of calls for help. The storm is blamed for at least five deaths, according to The Associated Press.

It was hard on the animals, too. The Texas A&M Veterinary Emergency Team spent days rescuing cattle and horses, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Meanwhile, Houston’s Fox 26 reported, officials at the Harris County Animal Shelter are urging the public to consider taking in animals to make room for others that were impacted by the storm.

The search for Big Tex came during the height of Texas’ alligator-hunting season, which runs from 10 September until 30 September.

“Everyone has to have special permits to hunt them,” Dr Walton said. Texas harvests the third-highest number of alligators in the nation, behind only Florida and Louisiana. “It helps with population management.”

Dr Walton has been in his job position since 2017. He says his office gets about 1,000 calls for “nuisance alligators” every year.

The office works with about 70 specially licensed professionals across the Lone Star State who are trained to capture and, if necessary, relocate wandering alligators. “A number of the staff” at Gator Country are among those trained, he said.

Gator Country opened to the public in 2005. Owner Gary Saurage told weather.com that the water was waist-high late last week.

Mr Saurage, who has a home on the property, posted a Facebook video on 21 September telling the park’s followers that he didn’t yet know how the animals were faring.

“The water just won’t leave,” Mr Saurage, an alligator trapper for the state of Texas, said then. “Southeast Texas, we love you. Stay strong; we’re fighting a battle here. This is the hardest battle I’ve ever fought in my life.”

On 23 September, Saurage returned to Facebook to report that Big Al, who previously held Big Tex’s record, was safe and sound in his enclosure at the park. Now Big Tex’s story has a happy ending as well.

The Washington Post