NEW ORLEANS — People were just waking up in the Lakeview neighborhood when someone spotted a large alligator walking down Orleans Avenue near Harrison Avenue.
“It’s a big old boy,” neighbor Stephen Cazenve said. “I’d say like 12 feet, at least.”
“Someone texted this to me and I got on my bike and rode over to see it,” neighbor Michael Barkemeyer said.
Somehow the alligator found itself on the wrong side of the seawall along a canal in nearby City Park.
Neighbors said it may have gotten into Lakeview through an open gate in the fence that surrounds a New Orleans Sewerage and Water board pumping station.
The gator walked about five blocks down Orleans Avenue before it was noticed.
Richard Schaefer jogs by this area every morning.
“Interesting, I have to make sure I watch where I’m jogging up in these weeds,” Schaefer said. “Just a way of life in Louisiana, I guess.”
Alligators are all around us in south Louisiana.
“We actually have the highest population of alligators of any state,” said alligator expert Erin Bogardt. “We’re right in prime alligator habitat. We live all of our lives next to them as neighbors.”
Bogardt is the Louisiana Swamp Keeper at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans.
She said we are in an active season for alligators.
“When it’s colder, they pretty much hibernate,” Bogardt said. “About March, April is their breeding season, so they start mating behavior. Then in about June, July they start nesting.”
Even long-time wildlife trapper John Schmidt was impressed by the size of the gator.
He said it may have been heading toward Lake Pontchartrain less than a mile away.
“Probably tired of being in that canal,” Schmidt said. “He could have been kicked off from the rain. Smelled the rain out in the lake. Something was going on. Probably a big male. Maybe he’s searching for a girlfriend.”
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries decided to put down the animal.
Lieutenant David Nunez of the Wildlife and Fisheries Department told NOLA.com that the size of the gator and its proximity to a neighborhood and a school figured in the decision.
"The one this morning that caused the ruckus was a nearly eleven-footer, weighed 300 pounds and showed up near a school," Nunez said. He said the department doesn't handle these situations directly but calls in a "licensed nuisance alligator hunter" to deal with it — on Friday, the usual Orleans Parish hunter wasn't available so Jefferson Parish's hunter responded instead.
Former State Senator Norby Chabert from Houma is asking LDWF Secretary Jack Montoucet to investigate why the Lakeview gator was euthanized.
He said on Twitter “…you know I respect our agents & as a lifelong gator man you know they could have transported that animal without use of deadly force.”
Experts say alligators are normally solitary creatures. That means we are not likely to see another one walking through Lakeview anytime soon.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.
