Alligator caught on LI, 7th time in a month

For the seventh time in less than a month, an alligator has been captured after roaming loose on Long Island, this time in Lake Ronkonkoma.

A nearly 3-foot-long male gator was nabbed in the lake of Lily Pond County Park on Smithtown Boulevard Saturday afternoon, said Roy Gross, chief of the Suffolk County SPCA.

Police received a call about an alligator loose on the grounds of the park shortly after 11 a.m. By the time SPCA officials arrived, the reptile had moved to the lake.

An SPCA agent waded in and, after a brief struggle, snared the 3-year-old reptile.

"Given the cold, it was quite feisty," Gross said. The gator is being transferred to Second Chance Wildlife Rescue in Farmingville.

In recent weeks, Long Island has resembled the Florida Everglades, with young alligators popping up in a supermarket shopping center, outside a chain restaurant and on a golf course.

The first was captured on Sept. 28 on the front lawn of a house in Mastic Beach. Days later, a gator was found on a Wading River golf course. Then two more were found crawling across the parking lot of a supermarket in Baldwin. A fifth gator was spotted in a plastic container outside an Applebee's restaurant in Shirley.

Gross said Saturday that he learned of a sixth gator that was captured two weeks ago in Yaphank.