Ypsilanti Township man finds dead alligator in his yard

by Tom Gantert | The Ann Arbor News
Friday February 13, 2009, 10:07 PM

When the snow disappeared in the recent thaw, it left behind more than a muddy yard at Russell Sizemore's home. The Ypsilanti Township man found a dead alligator near the side of his house.
He's never owned one and has no idea how it got there.

"Isn't that something?" Sizemore said. "I'm thinking, 'Michigan ... February ... and I got a dead alligator."


Eliyahu Gurfinkel, The Ann Arbor News
Russell Sizemore shows off the alligator carcass his neighbor noticed outside his house in Ypsilanti Township.Sizemore said he called 911, and his was forwarded to the Humane Society of Huron Valley. He said someone told him a representative of the Humane Society would remove the alligator carcass.
Tanya Hilgendorf, executive director of the Humane Society of Huron Valley, said the organization gets about two calls a year regarding alligators. She said most of the time the alligators are one-time pets that owners have discovered they can no longer handle.

"We don't ever encourage exotic pets," Hilgendorf said. "... Rarely do people have the knowledge and resources to take care of them properly. ... When people find out they can't take care of them, they just let them go."

Sizemore said he may not have even noticed the alligator until spring had not his neighbor pointed it out to him. He said he wasn't about to touch the dead animal.

"I've had dead squirrels, dead rabbits and dead birds," he said. "But this is my first alligator."

Wow

Thats weird.