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You never know what you’re going to come across when you go through the belongings of someone who has passed away. However, it’s hard to top the surprise a woman in Detroit recently got after encountering an alligator in the bedroom of her deceased son.
There are ten states where alligators can be found in the wild, and Michigan is definitely not one of them. However, it is one of nine states that don’t have any laws that prohibit you from owning one if you so desire, although there are some cities that have passed statutes that ban residents from keeping them as a pet.
It is also somewhat surprisingly home to an alligator sanctuary that has amassed a sizeable collection of the reptiles it’s rescued from 22 states, including three that were surrendered by college frats and another that had been chained up outside a drug house to serve as a guard.
However, there is another facility in Florida that will end up being the destination for a gator that gave a grieving mother in Detroit quite the shock.
A woman discovered an alligator in her son’s bedroom in Detroit after he passed away
Mark Rosenthal is a Detroit native who owns and operates Animal Magic, a company that offers people the chance to get up close and personal with the menagerie of exotic animals he’s been caring for over the course of more than four decades.
He also fields plenty of calls stemming from situations where an animal needs to be rescued, and according to KDIV, he was recently contacted by a woman in Detroit who headed to her son’s home after he passed away earlier this month before encountering an alligator in a tank in his bedroom on November 18th.
Rosenthal headed to the home and was greeted by what he described as “horrible conditions,” saying the alligator was lucky to appear as healthy as it did without any light, heat, or water. He spent 30 minutes attempting to wrangle the animal, which he said was between five-and-a-half and six feet long, before he successfully took it into his possession.
Rosenthal said he ended up in Novi, a suburb located around 45 miles outside of downtown Detroit, after getting lost while trying to get to the gator’s location, and he decided to dub it “Navi-gator” as a result. The animal will be leaving Michigan behind, as a sanctuary in Florida has agreed to welcome it into the fold.