Alligator on the Loose

A police helicopter circled overhead. National news crews set up cameras. People crowded around to catch a glimpse. All this excitement wasn’t for a movie star or a sports champion. It was for an alligator living in a public park in Chicago this past July.

In America, alligators usually live in hot, swampy places in the Southeast, like Florida—not chilly Midwestern states like Illinois. So the 5-foot alligator was a very unusual sight. People started calling him Chance the Snapper, after the famous Chicago musician Chance the Rapper.

So how did Chance end up in the park? Experts think he may have been a pet that someone no longer wanted.

In many states, owning wild animals—like alligators, tigers, and monkeys—is illegal. But that doesn’t stop thousands of Americans from keeping these kinds of exotic pets. When they’re young and small, exotic pets can be adorable and pretty harmless. But these animals need special food, care, and shelter to grow up healthy. Kept in human homes, they can suffer as they get bigger. And some grow up to be ferocious and dangerous.

Because exotic pets can be so difficult to care for, humans often abandon them. Chance’s owner probably dumped him in the park’s lake once the gator got too big to fit in the bathtub.

Although Chance appeared to enjoy his liberty, reptile experts said he would probably not survive the freezing Chicago winter.

But no one could seem to snare him. Some people wanted to apprehend him by luring him into a trap with peanut butter or chicken. But after a few days (and a lot of wasted food), Chance was still on the loose in the park.

Finally, authorities called in an alligator expert from Florida, Frank Robb. Robb spent nearly 36 hours searching for Chance before he spotted the reptile’s shining eyes on the surface of the water. He quickly snagged the gator with a fishing rod.

Chance’s week of independence captured the imaginations of many admirers in Chicago. Musicians wrote a song about him, he became popular on social media, and fans printed alligator T-shirts. So even though he’ll spend the rest of his days at an alligator farm in Florida, he will live on in the hearts of the people of Chicago.