Deborah Weisberg

A four-foot alligator recently captured by kayakers from southwestern Pennsylvania’s Kiskiminetas River is adjusting to new digs in Pittsburgh as part of a long-term plan to eventually send him to a sanctuary down South.
Nathan Lysaght, founder of the non-profit Nate’s Reptile Rescue, is giving the gator, Chomper, a home for the next two or three years, or until he reaches full 6-foot growth, and then he’ll be transferred to Florida or Texas. At Lysaght’s 100-square-foot facility, in South Park Township, Chomper has access to a 150-gallon pool with basking area, which he can use at will.

A raccoon baiting program aimed at stemming the spread of rabies is now underway in western Pennsylvania for the 22nd straight year.
Through early September, oral vaccine doses wrapped in fishmeal or a vanilla-flavored waxy substance are being dropped from helicopters and fixed-wing airplanes over less populated parts of the state’s western counties and distributed by hand around abandoned lots, under dumpsters, down storm drains, and in woody sections of public parks. The goal is to eradicate rabies in western Pennsylvania and keep it from moving further west into Ohio, and the effort appears to be working.

Wildlife watchers have welcomed a bunch of species to the Kiskiminetas River in Armstrong County, Pa., as it rebounds from industrial pollution.
But a 4-foot alligator? Uh, no. Yet kayakers on a recent Saturday afternoon sojourn say that’s exactly what they encountered, and they snapped a photo as proof.
“We were floating down the river and a group of eight ahead us yelled “Alligator!” recalled Jim Cibik, of Kiski Township, who was with his wife, Joli, and two friends and their kids. “I thought they were joking at first, but when we got to that spot, there it was, sunning itself on some rocks.”