Alligators at South Padre Island sanctuary being sent to Beaumont due to lack of space
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In the dead of night, eight alligators and a box truck rode down Highway 77, headed for a new home.
Nobody said it would be easy to catch one. Herpetologist Jake Reinbolt sweated much of what he drank to stay hydrated as he pulled them out, one by one.
“Every single one of these alligators is one that was in the wild and someone fed them,” Reinbolt explained. “Those alligators either have to be put down or taken to a sanctuary like ours."
The sanctuary is the South Padre Island Birding Nature and Alligator sanctuary. It's operators recently deemed the pond they have for small gators to be to full. They asked a sister organization in Beaumont, Gator Country, to take in some of their congregation -- the term by which a group of alligators is known.
The eight alligators were loaded onto a small U-Haul truck with a seven hour drive ahead. Reinbolt would need to remove the electrical tape on their mouths, allowing them to breathe more deeply. Gators regulate their temperature through their mouths, he said.
After untaping the mouths, he waited until 1 a.m. to start the drive. The overnight low temperature would help to keep the gators cool in the back of the truck. Their next stop would be the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint, where he was bound to get some questions.
“Not a lot of people take the effort to learn about animals they're afraid of,” said Rinbolt.
The organization has an overflow of gators and they expect to get more. Reinbolt said the problem starts with people's temptations to feed an alligator for fun. Once they get food from a human, they'll try again, he said. That can lead to dangerous situations.
Reinbolt said, adding that he wants people to understand that they can coexist with gators, and keep a safe distance. The message he wants to emphasize is to stop feeding the gators.
"Really what we're trying to do instead of catching more alligators is teaching more [people] not to feed them,” Reinbolt said.
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