Current Crazy Croc Encounter
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 18th, 2008
Chad Arment has passed along updates on a 2 to 3 ft long crocodilian being sighted and photographed in Hickory Lake, North Carolina. Seen for a week now (since Mother’s Day, May 11, 2008), it remains uncaught.
Eyewitnesses thought it was an alligator, but official speculation, at first, said it was a caiman.
N.C. Department of Wildlife Agent Michael Juhan was quoted by the media saying as much.
“It may have been a caiman, which is not unusual for people to have as an exotic pet before releasing it into the wild,” Juhan said.
While caimans are not native to this area, they have been captured in North Carolina.
In July 2006, when a creature appearing to be a small alligator was spotted in the French Broad River in Brevard in Transylvania County, biologists at Brevard College said the animal was a caiman.
Here’s a photo capture from a news video; as Arment says, “It’s a gator.”
Complete news stories are to be found here and here.
Appreciation to Chad Arment, author of Boss Snakes: Stories and Sightings of Giant Snakes in North America, for these reports and links.
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Hi Loren,
Thank you for posting this article. It is of particular interest to me since I live in Hickory, NC. It’s not too surprising to me that a crocodilian might be found in Lake Hickory, gators are fairly common in the eastern part of the state and they are known to have populations in lakes that are not too far south of here. Now if it does turn out to be a caiman, which I had not heard about prior to reading this article (of course I had heard about a “gator” in lake Hickory) that would surprise me. I guess the only logical explanation for that would be someone setting their pet caiman free in the lake. One small point of correction, it is actually Lake Hickory, not Hickory Lake, but we’ll not quibble over such minor details
We have a celebrity gator here in Southeast Texas too. The infamous Daisette “sinkhole” has a new resident 7 foot gator, also VERY common in these parts. How long it cane survive in the oil field polluted lake that has formed in the sinkhole is anyones guess.
It looks like a caiman - any identification of species? One of the links said it was 2-3 feet long, so sharing the lake with a caiman of that size can not really be seen as a significant risk (for now).
Looks like a gator, sure…
if there was a better picture that you could zoom in on,it would be easier to tell.Caimen have a small raised portion of flesh looks kinda like a hill above each eye.