Wildlife experts: Missing show-and-tell gator likely ‘safe' and ‘happy

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Right now, the alligator that escaped from a wildlife officer after show-and-tell at an elementary school is most likely relaxing in a muddy pond, wildlife experts said Friday.

The gator already will have managed to remove the tape from his snout and is preparing to stay very still and eat very little until Panama City temperatures get warmer, said John Moravek, the owner of A and J Proexotics and an expert in reptiles.

The gator is fine “as long as he has found a water source, which I’m sure he has,” Moravek said. “He’s not in a feeding mode.”

On Oct. 30, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer Dave Brady captured a 5-foot alligator in the wild and then brought the gator — with tape around its mouth — to his daughter’s class at Breakfast Point Academy. The event went well, FWC spokesman Stan Kirkland said, until Brady was driving away.

That’s when the gator made his move, jumped out of the back of Brady’s truck and scooted away into the woods near Pier Park. Brady and a specially trained K-9 tracked the gator to a nearby pond, but despite a dozen searches the critter is still on the lam.

“He does not face any kind of punishment or anything like that,” Kirkland said of Brady. “He feels bad about it. He did everything he could.”

Not only did the gator have electrical tape around its mouth, but it also was in a container until it jumped through the top of it and out of the truck.

“It wasn’t like he had dangled him out the window,” Kirkland said Friday.

The incident has garnered international attention, Kirkland said, adding that he had done an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation about the situation.

Although there have been concerns the animal would starve because it could not open its mouth, Kirkland and Moravek both said alligators can live for a long time without eating. The critters essentially stop feeding in the winter and live on the fat in their tails, Moravek said.

“It was just pretty much a single layer of thin black electrical tape,” Kirkland said.

The tape can keep an alligator’s massive jaws closed for a short time the tape, but it won’t stay on for long in the wild, Moravek said.

“He’s going to get it off,” Moravek said. “He’s going to be safe. He’s going to be happy.”

He added that he was more concerned about humans with no training who might venture into the woods in hopes of finding the gator.

“If they’re close enough to find out if it has tape around its mouth, then you’re too close to them at that point,” Moravek said.