June 23, 2001
It's good news all around for the famed Central Park alligator — actually a South American spectacled caiman — spotted in the Harlem Meer on June 16 and captured five days later by Floridian gator wrangler Mike Bailey and his wife, Tina.
"Damon the caiman" —so christened by Parks Commissioner Henry Stern — will not be abandoned to the polluted New York sewer system, nor will it end up a tourist attraction in the Florida theme park that sent Bailey to assist with the capture. Stern says Damon will be housed and cared for at the Central Park Zoo until a suitable residence in warmer climes is found for the two-year-old reptile.
Publicists for the Hollywood Florida Seminole Okalee Village expected Bailey to return with the caiman in tow, but city officials reportedly one-upped them by having Bailey sign a contract beforehand agreeing that the wayward critter is New York City property. All parties in the custody battle insist they only want what is best for little Damon.
The capture itself was undramatic. Efforts were hampered at the start by the blinding lights of TV crews, but once those were doused Tina Bailey quickly spotted the caiman just a few feet from where a cameraman was standing and scooped it up "like a loaf of bread," in the words of one news report. The watching crowd cheered its approval.
Charles Sturcken, chief of the city's Department of Environmental Protection, told the New York Times that alligators are considered "reptiles of honor" in the city, where it has long been rumored that teeming colonies of gators inhabit New York's vast sewer system. "We have some nice warm sewers," Sturcken said, hinting that Damon's rightful home is underneath the Big Apple.
Fortunately for Damon the caiman — since herpetologists insist that crocodilians could not survive for long in the polluted metropolitan sewers — Parks officials have already decided that the best home for him, for the time being, is with relatives above ground in the Central Park Zoo.
(Sources: Bergen Record, NY Daily News, Ny Times)
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