A two-foot crocodile was discovered this week at a Long Island nature preserve, prompting the nonprofit that rescued it to offer a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and capture of the person who illegally abandoned the dangerous reptile.
The crocodile was spotted Thursday walking along a trail at the Holtsville Wildlife & Ecology Center, which closed earlier this year.
Town employees who were still working at the property made the startling discovery. They guided the animal into a box before immediately contacting the Strong Island Animal Rescue League.
Frank Floridia, president of the Port Jefferson-based nonprofit, said finding a crocodile — an animal that is illegal to keep in New York — was “very concerning.”
“Let me tell you, if he bit somebody, you’re gonna feel it. It can tear your ligaments. It can seriously hurt somebody,” he told The Post.
“And it’s concerning for the animal because it doesn’t have the proper habitat, the proper environment to live.”
Floridia arrived at the preserve and carefully picked up the crocodile without being bitten.
“I grabbed him mid-back, so his tail couldn’t get me and his face couldn’t get me. I was able to hold him. He wasn’t aggressive,” he said.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is now caring for the crocodile, which must be removed from New York, Floridia said.
Meanwhile, the Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is working to determine where the crocodile came from and who abandoned it.
“Obviously, it’s not indigenous to these waters here,” Suffolk County SPCA Chief Roy Gross told Patch.
“So, we’re looking at it as abandonment, and we are investigating it.”
For Floridia, the crocodile rescue was unusual but not entirely unexpected. He said he has recently responded to several reports involving exotic animals abandoned across Long Island.
“I’ve been getting calls about animals being dumped all over the island,” he said.
“The night before, I got a snake out of Farmingdale, a ball python, four-feet long. Before that, there was a tarantula left behind in someone’s apartment in Port Jefferson Station. I had a monitor lizard that I had to get. You name it.”
