San Juan, July 22 (IANS/EFE) A five-feet-long alligator, probably ‘abandoned by its owners’, was found in a parking lot next to a shopping centre in a Puerto Rican town, officials said.
A police patrol found the reptile next to a parked car in Canovanas town. They were dumbfounded as to how an animal of that size got into the parking lot,
Officials from the department of natural resources said the reptile could have probably been abandoned by its owners.
In Puerto Rico, people regularly buy young animals of species that are not usually kept as pets, and when they grow to adulthood, their owners find it difficult to care for them and simply release them, they said.
Several alligators – a species not indigenous to Puerto Rico – have been found in the island’s urban areas.
