Video shows alligator slinking back into Charles River in Boston
By Mike Sullivan
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BOSTON (WBZ) — A viral video has people in Boston looking for an alligator in the Charles River. The small gator was spotted over the weekend and caught on video by a couple passing by.
“I wasn’t necessarily scared. My girlfriend was like, ‘I don’t want you to touch it. You don’t know what could be in the water,” said Trevor Rochelle, who took the video.
Rochelle likes to fish in the area, but he didn’t expect to catch a gator on camera instead. In the video, he is seen poking the alligator with a stick to see if it’s alive. After, it retreats back into the water. People on social media began questioning if the video was actually AI, but the stick that is in the video was still there when we met Rochelle for an interview.
“That was the first thing people thought. You’re joking. This isn’t real. The video was the realistic piece,” said Rochelle. “Believe me, it was real. I am not pulling anyone’s leg.”
He spotted the small gator in one of the two lagoons that sit in the Esplanade and connect to the Charles River. After the encounter, Rochelle says he contacted Boston Animal Control for help.
“They thought I was crazy. Then I told them I live near MIT, and they thought maybe he isn’t as dumb as we thought,” said Rochelle. “We got the authorities to come out here, and we reported it to who we needed to report it to.”
Alligators illegal to own in Massachusetts MassWildlife is aware of the video, and they are working with Boston Animal Control and the Massachusetts Environmental Police to try to capture it. Alligators are not native to the state, and MassWildlife says they cannot survive cold weather. They are also illegal to own in Massachusetts.
It turns out, this isn’t the first time an alligator has been found in the Charles River. WBZ covered a similar story in 2010, when a canoeist came across one in the Charles in Needham. A local reptile educator from Rainforest Reptile Shows pulled it from the water with his bare hands.
“It’s definitely not native, maybe someone had ill intentions,” said Rochelle. “We are trying to get the word out and trying to get everyone to come out to find this thing, to find the right home. That’s the end goal here.”
Rochelle has named the gator “TT,” and he hopes he can survive this week’s cold snap long enough to be found.
This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate partner and does not contain original CNN reporting.
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