Is Wally the emotional support alligator still alive? Why his handler doubts a reunion
Wally the emotional support alligator went missing April 21.
His handler, Joie Henney, was visiting friends in Brunswick, Georgia, when he returned from an early morning fishing trip. Wally was in his enclosure when he returned to his friends’ home.
About an hour after he returned, he noticed Wally was gone. He checked to see whether Wally could have escaped. He couldn’t have. The enclosure was not breached and there was no sign that Wally had absconded on his own. The enclosure was secure, with access to the inside the house so he could roam but not to the outdoors.
His friend’s wife mentioned that the motion-detecting lights near Wally’s pen had flicked on and off several times, but she thought nothing of it.
Henney organized a search party, to no avail. He suspected that some people ― people who objected to him keeping Wally in captivity and as an emotional support animal ― had broken Wally out and returned him to the wild. Wally has been with Henney since he was a pup and now, at 8 years old, he was accustomed to being around people. He had never bitten anyone or killed anything, Henney said. Left on his own in the wild, he believed Wally would not survive.
The theory wasn’t that outrageous.
But it may turn out to be fatal for Wally.
'We just want Wally back'
Wally has been a kind of celebrity for about five years, when Henney registered him as an emotional support animal. Wally visited nursing homes, appeared on television, took part in a wedding, made appearances at Pro Bass Shop and Philadelphia Flyers hockey games (no word on how he got along with Philly mascot Gritty).
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More about Wally: Wally the Emotional Support Alligator from York County was denied entry to a Phillies game
Wally, though wild, was docile. So Henney was concerned when Wally went missing.
“We just want Wally back,” he told the website The Blast.
Was Wally stolen?
After Wally went missing, a search turned up nothing, Henney reported. He had his suspicions and believed Wally could have been targeted for a gatornapping. Not many people knew Henney was visiting friends in Georgia from his York Haven home.
“I know we have people that’s often said ‘If we get a chance, we’re gonna get Wally and turn him back into the wild,’” Henney told The Blast.
A week passed since Wally had gone missing.
And that turned out not to be the case.
Found, and then missing again
On Sunday, a representative from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources called Henney and told him they found out what happened to Wally.
It turned out that a supposed practical joker ― “some jerk,” in Henney’s words ― had stolen Wally with the intent of dropping him off in someone’s yard “to terrorize them," according to a Facebook post on Wally's page. A 4-foot-long alligator will do that.
The terrorized party called the state, which then dispatched a trapper to catch Wally. The trapper snagged Wally and took him to a swamp with about 20 other gators, according to the Facebook post.
Wally may be gone forever.
“The swamp is very large,” Henney wrote, “and the trapper said the chances of finding Wally is slim to none.”
Henney hasn’t given up hope.
“But this is Wally,” he wrote. “(We) are currently headed to the swamp to search and will continue daily. We just pray, with other alligators present, that Wally is OK.”
Henney has not disclosed the location, but he said, “if anyone wanted to aid in the search, please contact Joie directly for more details. Please continue to pray because we need a miracle.”
Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Wally the emotional support alligator stolen, still missing
