Alligator

Their name, the Businessmen, was derived from the slang term "taking care of business." They were among several dominant African American gangs -- the Slausons, the Gladiators, the Del Vikings -- in the early 1960s in the neighborhood then known as South-Central: the precursors to the Bloods and the Crips. Now, the Businessmen of South Park have traded their fedoras for bifocals, and their whiskers are gray.

Down a quiet gravel road lined by homes, six tigers and two leopards live amid the roosters and cats in a small backyard. They are hungry and dirty, and their owner can no longer care for them. Carol Asvestas is tired of seeing the same scene played out across the country. Big cats are taken in as pets or kept in so-called sanctuaries, but are neglected by owners who become overwhelmed. Many big cats, like the ones here, will end up with Asvestas at her San Antonio Wild Animal Orphanage.

Authorities were conducting an intense search Thursday for a young man's four-foot-long pet alligator, which escaped from an unlocked cage earlier this week.

A hissing, three-foot-long alligator was captured in the borough of Queens after Kissena Park patrons reported seeing the creature in a small lake. It was nabbed by a day-camp worker who had prior experience handling reptiles.

Police arrested a man in Tampa who picked up a dead alligator and tried to butcher it on his front lawn. Benjamin Hodges, 35, said he found the dead gator floating in the Hillsborough River and took it home in a shopping cart because he wanted a new belt. He was charged with killing or possessing an alligator, a felony punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. "I didn't think there was anything illegal about skinning a dead gator," he said.

A Colorado man has acknowledged that he called media outlets to report that a 7-foot alligator had been captured at a Los Angeles lake -- a report that turned out to be a hoax. Alamosa County Sheriff Dave Stong said Friday that James Solvig is under investigation on suspicion of criminal impersonation. No charges have been filed. The alligator, known as "Reggie," was dumped in a Harbor City lake several months ago.

Chinese alligators, rare creatures found only in the Yangtse River, have doubled in number since 1982, to about 1,000, because of artificial hatching techniques, the New China News Agency reported Sunday. The report said the Alligator Breeding Center in Anhui province had achieved a survival rate of 70%.

If you see icebergs in your neighbor's pool this summer, it's not because the water's freezing. Those icebergs are nothing more than a lot of hot air. They'll never melt, although they might deflate. They're pool floats. Icebergs, towering volcanoes, big banana boats, alligators and whales--you never know what you'll find bobbing around the pool these days. The new generation of eye-catching pool floats is like blowup art; people leave them out even when they're not in use.