Greater City Providence

Gator!

Gator on the loose but not a threat: wpri.com

WPRI reports on the alligator that has been spotted recently in the Woonasquatucket River around Eagle Square. Apparently the DEM has no plans to try to remove it and assume it will just die in the winter (kinda sad).

Jef Nickerson

Jef is Greater City Providence's co-founder, editor, and publisher. He grew up on Cape Cod and lived in Boston; Portland, Maine; and New York before settling in Providence. In addition to urbanism, Jef is interested in art, design, and ice cream. Please feel free to contact Jef if you have any question or comments about Greater City Providence.

8 comments

  • Kinda sad, yes, but better that than someone taking it upon themselves to catch it and turning it into soup or alligator steaks or a wallet or something. I think if there had been a safe place for this creature to go, catching and relocating would have been a good idea…

  • Can’t we just put it a retiree’s Cadillac on the way down to Florida for the winter?

  • I burst out laughing at “The geese are on high alert”. And for the record, they’re ducks, Walt.

  • Not for anything but there’s plenty of food source for a gator in that river.

    And not that I would swim in that, it’s got a lot of heavy metal pollution in the sediment.

  • I know they’d have build an enclosure, and probably hire or train some staff, but wouldn’t it be nice if the zoo came and got the gator and made an exhibit? You know, rather than just letting it die.

  • PETA should get involved with this instead of throwing paint at people and berating non-vegans

  • My understanding was that the zoo was contacted but because they don’t know where this alligator has been, they risk the other animals’ health by bringing in a “stray.”

    It is unfortunate that there’s no place at the zoo to quarantine such a beast until it is determined to be healthy (albeit full of heavy metals and mercury) but the zoo hasn’t had a “mascot” since the miserable summer of polar bear death, maybe this guy could be the new mascot of the city…Scrappy, mean and living off rats sounds just like Providence a lot of the time.

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