An alligator that was found with her mouth taped shut in an overgrown retention pond is now the size and condition to hold her own in Gatorama’s main colony, more than two years after she was brought in.
Georgie arrived at the Palmdale, Florida animal park in February 2023. She had been trapped and moved after a rescue effort involving a licensed trapper, Gatorland and several individuals, and she was in no shape to compete for food or territory.
“She is doing well so far and will be offered a feeding as soon as the day warms up,” Ben Register said the morning she arrived. “Even though she probably won’t eat for a few days due to the stress of being moved and the ordeal she been through.”
Two years in a pond of her own
Gatorama put Georgie in a private pond rather than the large front habitat, deliberately. An underweight alligator dropped into an established colony loses every contest that matters: food, basking space, water.
She stayed there while she ate and grew. She has now moved to the front pond and takes part in the park’s daily feed shows.
“Watching Georgie’s progress over the past few years has been incredible,” said Register, now Gatorama’s operations manager. “She’s come a long way from her rescue days, and seeing her now in the front pond engaging with the other alligators, and even participating in our shows, is something special.”
The taping is the ordinary part
The detail that made Georgie a news story, the tape across her jaws, is standard practice for moving a live alligator. What was not standard was how long she wore it.
Gatorama takes in nuisance alligators from licensed trappers as an alternative to the animals being killed, which is the usual outcome in Florida for a gator that turns up somewhere people do not want it. The park says the trapper who brought Georgie has since built a purpose-made trailer so he no longer has to tape mouths shut on the way in.
“I used to trap alligators with my father and I know how difficult catching alligators in an overgrown retention pond can be,” Register said.
The pet trade produces the same problem from a different direction. Wild Wonders in California took in an alligator released illegally into a reservoir after her owner could no longer keep her.
Gatorama has been operating in Palmdale since 1957.
