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Beware the giant alligator
A co-worker received an e-mail this morning from a former employee forwarding an e-mail he got about a giant alligator lurking in Lake Conroe. Click on each of the photographs for a larger image.
The photographs you see here are genuine, but all the text surrounding these shots are fake, according to the Web site hoax-slayer.com.
This photo claims to be a picture was taken by a KTBS helicopter flying over Lake Conroe, near Houston. Well, KTBS is out of Shreveport, La. No way they’re sending a chopper that far for anything (and I kind of doubt the station even has a helicopter). As soon as I saw that, I was suspicious and started Googling “big gator Lake Conroe.”
The hoax-slayer.com site notes that other versions of the message use alternative locations, including Lake George (Florida), Cross Lake (Louisiana) and Lake Murray (South Carolina).
In fact, the photographs were taken by Terri Jenkins of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a wildlife refuge near Savannah, Ga. According to information in a 2004 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service press release:
The photographs of this deer-eating alligator were taken from the air by Terri Jenkins, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service District Fire Management Officer. She was preparing to ignite a prescribed fire at Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, about 40 miles south of Savannah, Georgia, on March 4, 2004.
Jenkins took the photographs from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helicopter used for igniting controlled fires. She estimates that the alligator was at least 12 or 13 feet long.
The e-mail my friend received then jumps to a third photo seen here with this accompanying text:
This alligator was found between Athens and Palestine, Texas, near a house. Game wardens were forced to shoot the alligator-guess he wouldn’t cooperate …
Anita and Charlie Rogers could hear the bellowing in the night. Their neighbors had been telling them that they had seen a mammoth alligator in the waterway that runs behind their house, but they dismissed the stories as exaggerations.
‘I didn’t believe it,’ Charles Rogers said.
Friday they realized the stories were, if anything, understated.
Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens had to shoot the beast. Joe Goff, 6’5’ tall, a game warden with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, walks past a 23-foot, 1-inch alligator that he shot and killed in their back yard.
It seemed to imply that this is the same alligator, but Lake Conroe is nowhere near Athens and Palestine. I’m not sure about the validity of this picture.
But it sure gives you something to talk about.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Headlines, Around the state, Weird & wacky
Comments
By No Name
November 20, 2008 12:03 PM | Link to this
Meh…. I had a fist fight with a bigger alligator then that one the other day on the banks of Lake Waco.
By Gary
November 20, 2008 12:58 PM | Link to this
This article was a waste of time. Good job, Snopes Sury.
By KF
November 20, 2008 6:17 PM | Link to this
Desperate Reporting. This hoax is years old.