The Pet Shop Spectator / Hey There, Alligator
Conlon, Edward
Hey There, Alligator Victor Bailly, a reticent Puerto Rican, is a Humane Law Enforcement Officer of the ASPCA, and as such serves as an interlocutor between City Hall and the Animal Kingdom. While...
...Robert O'Neill, the retired NYPD lieutenant who heads Humane Law Enforcement, began with the ASPCA in January, and he is still somewhat unaccustomed to the "special kind of person" who is attracted to the work...
...They shoot them with steroids, train them like fighters...
...A nearby oven indicated that as far as a snake is concerned, guinea pigs are microwavable...
...Who complained...
...The license for the alligators was in order, and permits for the caimans were purportedly pending...
...Snakes are expensive and delicateanimals, and take a long time to heal if they're hurt...
...He was wearing snakeskin boots...
...She had a panther jumping around the office the other day...
...remarked Bailly as we drove off...
...Edward Conlon 94 The American Spectator October 1994...
...I never liked that dog...
...When asked about a particular rattlesnake, however, the answer was decidedly less satisfactory: "Somebody dropped it off," said a skinhead, in a soft, slightly defensive schoolboy mumble...
...As Bailly made the arrangements, a substantial young woman sat on a couch in front of the television, eating a cheeseburger...
...Good...
...The store had a Gabon viper, several rattlesnakes, caimans, alligators, and monitor lizards in cages with signs that said "For Exhibition Only...
...If the cat was drugged, the snake would ingest the chemical as well, and declawing is prohibitively expensive...
...Outside, the officers compared notes and made plans for a subsequent visit, which would hopefully include federal agents from Fish and Wildlife...
...Yeah...
...I respect them and fear them...
...I saw her panty hose...
...It was no cub...
...While he doesn't own a dog, in a sense he has more than half a million, along with an even larger number of felines, almost a thousand horses, countless rodents and reptiles, and a population of poisonous snakes, fighting cocks, wolf-dogs, and other exotica that, though small, is never quite as small as expected...
...Bailly, in uniform, knocked at the door of the narrow row house and gave the generic response of "Officer" when asked who it was...
...B ut aside from the cruelty of the rat-sport, there was no immediate cause for action...
...asked O'Neill...
...B ailly and O'Neill went to BedfordStuyvesant to investigate a complaint about a dog that had been kept outside in a backyard throughout the winter storms...
...With that in mind, it was not difficult to understand his trepidation at being greeted by two such animals roaming loose in a Long Island pet store...
...Bailly asked what the pythons—sleek and massive snakes, one of which was albino and several of which were longer than eight feet—were fed, and was told "Frozen guinea pigs...
...The pressure from the jaws really could kill you...
...There's a window of a few weeks, when they grow up, where you don't have to keep 'em in a cage," he explained...
...How are you with pit bulls, Victor...
...The woman snorted: "I want to call to thank them...
...As we prepared to leave, a man in dark glasses and a bolo tie halted for a moment at the sight of the uniforms, then walked over to joke with the managers...
...The three managers who presented themselves weighed a collective 800 lbs...
...Are they friendly...
...We were admitted by a small girl who fetched a sleepy teenage cousin from the basement...
...It was a cub...
...Go ahead, take him...
...He took us to the kitchen for a look in the back yard, where the dog, an excitable yellow mutt with tar markings on the flanks, yelped at the window as we approached...
...The lady of the house, reached by teleEdward Conlon is a writer living in the Bronx...
...The cages were clean and the animals well-maintained...
...she asked, sternly...
...Another sign announced that for $4, one could purchase a white rat to feed to the alligators...
...Two of them were skinheads, and their arms were adorned with a variety of tattoos and keloid scars...
...phone at work, gave her permission for the ASPCA to take the animal to a shelter...
...There was some quiet speculation as to whether the management might be prevailed upon if a loving family, with adequate cash, wished to clasp a viper to its bosom...
...We left them beside a wall of tabloid clippings about fatal crocodile attacks and T-shirts patterned with reptile couples in positions from the Kama Sutra...
...He didn't want it, and asked if I could take it...
...Well, he's either fine or he's dead," mused O'Neill...
...he asked...
...Cats are feisty, they have claws and teeth," said Bailly...
...A fter we left, the discussion was of canine vogues, how German shepherds and Doberman pinschers have been supplanted by pit bulls and Rottweilers...
...It was greeted with some skepticism, less for any disbelief in human cruelty than for practical reasons...
...We were visiting to check out a report that kittens were being fed to pythons at the store...
...We have to keep it confidential," explained O'Neill, affably dodging what appeared to be indignant demand...
...Did you notice the guy who came in as we left...
...Careful," said Bailly...
...The dog, a stray, had bitten another cousin several months ago, though the incident was not reported and neither biter nor bitee was tested for rabies...
...Who told about us...
...Now put them away...
...Did you see her arms...
...My guess, that week was up...
...He mentioned one such colleague to a co-worker...
...Could have been anyone...
...Some people hang them from trees while they clamp on branches, hang weights on them...
...The answer seemed a shifty improvisation until we looked in a freezer in the back, which was fully stocked with white guinea pigs and bags of piebald mice...
Vol. 27 • October 1994 • No. 10
