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When Reggie came to a chain-link fence more than 4 feet tall - one that “alligators really shouldn’t be able to get over,” Recchio said - he started climbing. It was August, and the coldblooded animal’s energy was at its peak. He checked for other alligators that might want a piece of his territory. Reggie had done in his new habitat what he most likely had done upon entering Lake Machado. Media helicopters chopped overhead, scaring Reggie back into the water before wranglers could grab him.
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The crowds around the lake were near-constant, which meant any gator-hunting efforts happened in full view of an audience. “The less commotion there is here, more likely we’re going to see it.”īut there was always commotion. “It’s like a needle in a haystack, except the needle can move any direction at 30 miles an hour,” Young said. It was quietly transferred to an animal sanctuary while the pursuit continued. Lake Machado was so amenable to alligators that firefighters found a second gator in an adjacent flood channel during the search, one too small to be Reggie.
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If Reggie perceived a sound or movement as threatening, he simply swam away. He was just a regular alligator, behaving as an alligator would in a setting far more suited to his needs than to those of his pursuers. It’s not that Reggie was an extraordinarily canny alligator, craftily outwitting his would-be captors.
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“We go out there and say, ‘Hey Bob, come here, Bob, over here,’ and he’ll come right up to you.” They know their name,” a Gatorland wrangler told a Times reporter. “We have animals at our park that we work with all the time. Vendors patrolled the crowd with custom-designed T-shirts and snacks. People hurled offerings of food over the fence: marshmallows, raw chicken, tortillas. English-speaking fans nicknamed the alligator Harry Spanish speakers called him Carlito. The longer Reggie remained on the loose, the more people came. After that, no one really seemed sure what to do.Ĭurious crowds gathered at the park. Park employees quickly built a fence around the lake. 12, a teenage Reggie crawled out of the water for a sunbath, and a city lost its mind.
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Claims of a wild swamp-dwelling reptile living a mile from the 110 seemed fantastical. This was a year and a half before the iPhone, and photographic evidence was scarce. Rumors of an alligator-like figure surfacing in the lake began to swirl around Harbor City. Supervisor Janice Hahn, then a city councilwoman representing Harbor City Particularly in the evening when Reggie could be seen poking his head out of the lake, they would bring lawn chairs and blankets.” “It almost became a circus-like atmosphere. An alligator brain is the size of a peanut. What Reggie makes of his unusual life story is a mystery. A decent chunk of L.A.'s budget - $180,000 - went to Reggie-related expenses. His name appeared in headlines from Long Beach to London. You could buy T-shirts emblazoned with Reggie’s likeness. But once upon a time - before P-22, before Grumpy Cat and Doug the Pug - people gathered by the hundreds just to catch a glimpse of the celebrity gator. Some visitors stop to read it a lot of them don’t. He lives companionably with a female named Tina, and if you think it’s easy for two alligators to pair up later in life without trying to bite each other’s limbs off, well, you don’t know a lot about alligators.īetween the two fences that separate Reggie’s enclosure from the public is a sign with the thumbnail version of his remarkable journey to the Los Angeles Zoo 15 years ago today. When it’s chilly, he doesn’t do much of anything. Reggie, the most famous alligator in Los Angeles, lives in a beautifully landscaped midcentury dwelling just outside Los Feliz.