By By LYDIA GRIMES – Features writer
The discovery of an alligator inside the city limits of Brewton last week brings to mind a few questions: Where did it come from? Why was it here?
And what do you do if you see one?
Conservation Office Jim Daugherty said it is not unusual to find alligators in areas that are near water.
Bernice White came face-to-face with an alligator last week in her yard at 300 Stallworth St., in the Alco area near the pond on Forrest Hill Drive.
She called the human society, which came to get the animal and destroyed it because it had no means to destroy it. The five-foot alligator already had a bullet wound on its snout when White found it.
According to the Web site www.outdooralabama.com, the alligator population was threatened with extinction in the 1920s and 1930s. Alabama led the nation in passing a law to protect them and in 1967 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed the American alligator on the Endangered Species List.
The alligators lived and prospered over the next couple of decades and in 1987, they were removed from the Endangered Species List.
Today the population is such that alligator hunting on a regulated basis will be held in August of this year. A lottery will be held to see who has the chance to participate in the alligator hunt.