Monday, July 21, 2003
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Officials are hoping bite-sized morsels of chicken will tempt a three-foot alligator out of the Harrisburg lake it now calls home.
Although witnesses first reported seeing the reptile in March, it was only after more sightings occurred last week that animal-control officer Fred Lamke baited a pair of traps along the shoreline of tiny Italian Lake.
The lake, which is next to Harrisburg High School, is in an upscale Harrisburg neighborhood about a mile from the governor's residence.
The alligator is considered too small to represent a danger to the public, said Lamke, who speculated it may have been a pet whose owners grew tired of it and abandoned it.
Among the onlookers drawn to the lake by reports of the fugitive gator was 8-year-old Rushawn Johnson, who said Thursday he had seen it earlier in the day.
"It had big eyeballs ... and little bumpy things going down its back," the boy said.
A television news videographer and a city police officer have also seen the alligator, and on Wednesday Lamke himself got a firsthand look at it.
Lamke rigged up a pair of traps, and, at the suggestion of far more experienced gator-catchers in Florida, baited them with chicken pieces just large enough to cover a pair of bluefish hooks.
"Great," he said. "Harrisburg now has its own Loch Ness story."