NEW YORK (AP) _ New Yorkers enjoying the sun in a Queens park found an unlikely companion _ a 4-foot-long alligator.
Police took an emergency call from people who had seen the alligator strolling through Alley Pond Park on Monday afternoon. Police and city park rangers captured the animal with a noose and took it to a reptile specialist.
No one was injured by the reptile, which was captured peacefully, police said.
Police didn't know if the animal was a pet or had been living in Alley Pond.
In June 2001, a 2-foot-long baby spectacled caiman, a member of the crocodile family, was captured in Central Park by an alligator wrestler from Florida and his wife.
City park officials said then that the Central Park reptile probably was a pet somebody dumped in the Harlem Meer after it got too big. The same thing happened four years earlier, when a pet alligator outgrew its owner's bathtub and was dumped in Kissena Lake in Queens.
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4-foot alligator found walking in Queens park
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