Old Bob, a 4-foot-long, 100-pound alligator snapping turtle, was a local legend for years before repairs to Fullerton's Laguna Lake dredged him up last September. A monitor lizard appeared several years ago in a dam pond near Yuma, Calif., but was never captured. Now an alligator in Harbor City's Lake Machado has alternately thrilled and tantalized a growing crowd.
But the gator, which had been dubbed Harbor Park Harry, is only the newest face of an old problem: people releasing pets, sometimes exotic ones, at local parks.
While there have been fierce debates over the Harbor City animal -- Is it an alligator or caiman? male or female? recent resident or long-time inhabitant? -- one detail that observers, rangers and experts agreed on was this: Harry was probably a pet quietly let go at the park.
By dawn Wednesday, two men had been arrested on suspicion of dumping the gator, a male named Reggie. A tip led investigators to the men's homes, where they seized three alligators, four piranha, one rattlesnake, three desert tortoises, six tortoise eggs, one scorpion and about 10 pounds of marijuana.
Authorities say it's hard to determine how frequently pets are abandoned at parks, but they know it's happening. A few years back, workers arrived at a San Pedro area park and found about a dozen abandoned aquariums crawling with about 50 hamsters and rats.
Despite campaigns against the practice, it's not uncommon to see an upsurge of ducklings and rabbits dumped at parks after Easter, likely pet presents that don't work out, officials said. And animals as varied as common red-eared slider turtles and piranha have appeared at local park lakes. But it's the exotic animals that generally get the attention.
Mike McBride, an assistant chief in the California Department of Fish and Game, called exotics the equivalent "of seeing a canary in the middle of the Sahara Desert."
"People love the legends," McBride said. In reality, though, released animals can be dangerous or have diseases that harm other animals in the environment. "Once you scratch underneath the surface of the awe of it, the humor evaporates pretty fast," he said.
Abandoning an animal is a crime in California, punishable by six months in prison and/or a fine of up to $1,000, according to the Los Angeles city attorney's office. But the city has not prosecuted anyone for the crime in more than two years, said Frank Mateljan, spokesman for the office.
