11-foot alligator found with odd contraption on its head at South Carolina resort
An 11-foot alligator in desperate need of rescue was found wandering a South Carolina golf resort wearing a contraption on its head like a ball cap.
The odd discovery was made by staff at Fripp Island Golf & Beach Resort and it wasn’t easy for them to figure out what had happened. The 3,000-acre island is about an 85-mile drive south from Charleston.
“After talking with them and looking at the pictures they sent, it appeared that this alligator had somehow gotten a tomato cage stuck over his head!” the University of Georgia’s Coastal Ecology Lab reported in a March 25 news release.
“In situations like this, it is very tempting to want to jump in and immediately help by removing whatever is stuck on the animal. That is not always the best thing to do, as oftentimes the animal can get free.”
Turns out this wasn’t one of those cases.
The well-known alligator, which goes by the name King Arthur, was monitored to see what happened next, including any change in behavior.
As expected, the metal strips began to break apart within two days, the lab says.
“However, it was still attached fairly tightly around his neck. We waited another couple of days, but it did not seem like he had made any more progress, and other things were starting to get caught in the cage,” the lab reported.
“We were worried that he would get stuck on something underwater and drown if he could not get free. ... We decided human intervention was necessary.”
The lab sent a capture team to work with the resort’s head naturalist, Colleen Goff, to trap the alligator. It took multiple attempts, but the alligator was caught and the cage removed, the lab said.
King Arthur is now back to “living his best alligator life.”
It’s unknown how long the cage was stuck on his head, but it was noticed the third week of March, the lab said.
“Our best guess is that the cage ended up in the water, washed into a pipe, and that when the alligator swam through the pipe he also swam into the tomato cage,” the lab said.
“This is an excellent example of why it is so important to properly dispose of your trash. This is just one of many examples where an animal has had complications because of trash that was improperly disposed of.”
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