newjerseynewsroom.com

Firemen flush Four-foot animal out of storm pipe near school

A four-foot alligator apparently thought classes started already in Wayne when he was spotted walking across the grounds of George Washington Middle School.

"It was near the storm pipe," said Wayne Det. Capt. Jim Clarke in a report on NorthJersey.com.

A woman taking a walk near the school on Wednesday noticed the creature and called the police, who had some trouble nabbing the freshwater gator, who slipped back into the pipe, which runs into a stream which runs into Packanack Lake.

Animal control officials from Wayne Township also arrived as did members of the fire company and other police officers.

"Animal control didn't have anything to deal with a four-foot alligator," Clarke told NorthJersey.com. "But they had snares and tried to lure it out with a hot dog — half a hot dog."

But the alligator didn't go for it and officials had to call in the big guns.

Chuck Sliker of the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife arrived and worked with firefighters to flush the gator out with a blast from the fire hose.

The alligator was snared without incident, placed in a bear cage, and taken away to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Officials were thinking the animal was a pet that outgrew its home.

The alligator — more typical in southeast Florida — was not the property of the school or a science class, the report stated.

— ANGELA DAIDONE, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM