VILLAS — Some like furry pets that bark and meow, others prefer finned friends that swim in an aquarium, still others thrill to have something more exotic, like an alligator. Cute, perhaps, when tiny, but given the right grub, they have a tendency to grow and grow and grow.
No one knows that better than Don Montgomery, Lower Township animal control officer. He’s had his share of dogs and cats, raccoons and opossums, snapping turtles and yes, alligators, five thus far, this being the fifth.
On Tue., July 17, when temperatures in this bayside community were in the 90s, and, with humidity, felt more like the Everglades than South Jersey, Montgomery got a call to fetch a gator.
That’s nothing new for the seasoned Montgomery; he responded to a Villas home where, he was told, the individual was “babysitting” an alligator that was about three feet long.
He said it was the second gator from that same address to which he responded.
Montgomery judged the animal was four to five months old, and he was uncertain of its sex. He planned to take the gator to Steve Serwatka’s animal rescue in Eldora.
As Montgomery displayed the gator, its mouth securely taped, in the Herald parking lot, a reader stopped and exclaimed he would expect to see something like it in Florida, not South Jersey.
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