Could there be an alligator living in Buckeye Brook?
Brook keeper Steve Insana says yes.
"I was down at the brook a couple of weeks ago and I saw something rising from the bottom, coming up," said Insana, president of the Buckeye Brook Coalition. .It didn't come over the top so I couldn't get a total identification of it. I thought it was an Atlantic sturgeon, but I thought they were extinct."
Insana said he called DEM and learned the idea wasn.t all that far-fetched. As it turned out, a sturgeon was netted in bay waters about a year or two ago.
"So, I thought, well maybe that was what I saw," said Insana, "but then on Sunday after church I stopped by the brook and as I was looking down stream, there was a lady there and she said to me, "I'd be careful if I were you.""
Insana asked her why and she told him she and a few others had seen an alligator in the waters of Buckeye Brook just a few days earlier.
"I said, "Oh really?" said Insana. "So I started thinking maybe that was what I must've seen. It could've been an alligator but since it didn't surface enough for me to identify it and I couldn't make out the full body out of it, I wasn't sure."
Insana said he learned soon after that an alligator was pulled out of Spring Green Pond last year and that further convinced him that was what he saw. Concerned for the safety of the herring working their way back out to the bay, and also for people who frequent the banks of the brook, Insana said he'd be keeping an eye out for the gator.
"I'll be like Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter," he joked. "You might see me wrestling the thing in."
Steve Insana, the Alligator Hunter. While we like the sound of that, we hope Steve will call in the officials when he does spot the creature. And knowing the time he spends on the brook, we are certain he will.