Help, Wally the alligator has disappeared

Wally Gator (8-9 years old) has helped his owner Joseph “Joie” Henney (70) through a difficult period of illness with cancer.

They have slept in the same bed at night and worked to help the disadvantaged during the day.

In 2022, VG ​​interviewed the happy reptile owner who had a very special bond with his alligator.

– He is completely different from all other alligators I have met. Alligators don’t care how you feel. They will bite you if you do something that provokes them. Wally refuses to bite. He does not bite animals or people, he said in the interview.

Now there is a crisis for Henney.

Wally Gator was kidnapped – and later released into the swamp.

Henney released the news in late April in a Facebook update: The alligator was taken in the early morning hours of April 21 from an enclosure where it was being held in Brunswick, Georgia.

Released in a garden

Henney says he had learned Wally was taken by a person who had then released him in someone else’s yard, possibly to scare them, according to Wallygator, the reptile’s own Facebook page.

When the homeowner discovered the alligator in the yard, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources was called and they sent in a trapper. He took Wally with him and released him into a swamp where about 20 other alligators lived, according to The New York Times.

Very little chance

But how life in the swamp will turn out for the domesticated and human-loving alligator is uncertain.

And, the chance of finding Wally Gator again in this swamp area is very slim.

That week, Henney wrote that he had been out and about without finding Wally, who is now about 8 to 9 years old and about six feet tall.

The agency that caught Wally Gator said in a statement Wednesday that it had received several calls about “nuisance alligators.”

“We have no information to confirm whether any of them are the same alligators that were reported stolen,” the agency wrote.

Henney realized Wally was special the first time he met him. At 18 months old, Wally was found in a puddle in Florida with two other young alligators. Henney, who is a reptile expert, was asked if he could help. Two of the alligators acted like, yes alligators, and were rehomed in a reptile shelter.

Denied at baseball game

But the third, who was to become Wally, was so special that Henney decided to keep him. Since then, they have slept together, watched TV, driven and done community service together.

Wally also helped Henny through a difficult period with cancer.

Last fall, Henney took Wally to a baseball game. But when he trooped up with the alligator at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, they were rejected. The policy in the arena is that service dogs are allowed, but not other animals.

Not even Wally Gator.