Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

Lacombe man faces Wildlife and Fisheries charges for transporting gator on ...

"All of these things are in place for conservation reasons because an alligator is a protected animal," said Lt. Eddie Skena of the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Wildlife and Fisheries on Monday released information on its charges against Whitney Holloman, who told investigators he took the gator from a swimming hole near his home, taped up its snout and was planning to transport it to St. Rose on June 25. That plan was thwarted when the alligator fell out of the bed of Holloman's pickup and onto the Causeway when he was about nine miles from Metairie.

Wildlife and Fisheries agents tried to bring the gator, which was seriously injured in the fall, to Bayou Segnette but it died on the way.

Causeway Police and Wildlife and Fisheries agents were able to track down Holloman by looking at video footage of traffic crossing the bridge the morning the reptile was discovered.

Wildlife and Fisheries agents cited Holloman with taking an alligator when the season was closed and illegal possession of an alligator, Skena said.

Holloman was also cited for driving with an unsecured load by Causeway Police.

In addition to the criminal charges, Wildlife and Fisheries will likely seek a civil fine to make restitution to the state, Skena said.

Rather than take matters into their own hands, those who come across alligators or other "nuisance animals" should call Wildlife and Fisheries' 24-hour hotline at 800.422.2511 to get in touch with someone authorized to remove them, Skena said.

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Jeff Adelson can be reached at jadelson@timespicayune.com or 985.645.2852.

Alligator turns up lurking on Lake Pontchartrain Causeway | NOLA.com

Chalk up another one this past weekend: a 6-foot alligator parked on the worn concrete of the southbound span about nine miles from the Metairie shoreline.

Officers handling the call initially thought they were responding to a "tire carcass,'' their jargon for the strips of rubber 18-wheelers sometimes leave. But when officer Tiffany Daw arrived at dawn Saturday, she found that, sure enough, there was a gator in the right lane.

Hardly menacing, the poor, bloodied creature was on its back and seemed barely alive. But before Daw could finish the words "belly up'' in her report back to dispatch, the gator righted itself and let her know it was, indeed, alive.

Daw's supervisor, Sgt. Michael Kelly, soon arrived to provide backup.

"He was on all fours,'' Kelly said Wednesday of the gator. "But you could tell he was stunned, kinda dazed. I thought, 'We can't just leave him here in the road.' ''

Problem was, dealing with alligators isn't something Causeway officers typically train for.

"But I'd seen enough 'Swamp People' episodes, so I went to my trunk and got my gloves," Kelly said. "Then I went over and tapped him a little with my baton."

The gator gamely tried to ... well, do what agitated gators do when tapped with police batons. But battered as the creature was, it could offer little in the way of resistance.

"So I ease up behind him, grab his tail and just start walking backward with him,'' Kelly said.

Kelly dragged the gator to the small shoulder near the turnaround on the southbound span and called into dispatch for a Wildlife and Fisheries agent. While dispatchers were trying to track down agents, workers from Boh Bros. Construction Co., who are working on a flood control project on the south end of the bridge, volunteered to come up with a truck and some rope.

The alligator was lassoed and pulled into the back of the truck.

"He didn't like that too much," Kelly said of the alligator. "He showed us his pearly whites a couple times."

They hauled the gator to the south end of the bridge, put it in the shade and tried to keep it moist until a Wildlife and Fisheries agent arrived. The agent planned to relocate the gator to the wilds of Bayou Segnette on the west bank of Jefferson Parish, but the gator didn't survive the trip.

"I got the call later that he didn't make it,'' Kelly said. "He was pretty beat up.''

The big mystery, of course, is how a 6-foot alligator came to find itself on the Causeway, nine miles from the nearest land. There certainly weren't any reports of a gator passing through the toll plaza.

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