BEAUMONT, Texas — A "celebrity" from upstate New York arrived at his new Southeast Texas home at Gator Country just west of Beaumont on Wednesday afternoon.
Albert is a 34-year-old, 725 pound, 11 foot alligator who has lived nearly all of his life at a home in Hamburg, New York. Hamburg is a town of about 60,000 just south of Buffalo and is about a 30 minute drive from the Canadian border.
A court order has sent Albert the Alligator on a nearly 1,500 mile road trip to his new home, according to Gary Saurage of Gator Country.
"He was in a basement they had dug a man made pool so he did have some water. But the water hadn't been changed in seven years," Saurage said.
Albert arrived at Gator Country around 2:30 p.m. after making the cross-country trip in the back of a large pick-up truck.
He'll be spending his first night in Texas in a pond all to himself. The staff at Gator Country plans on getting him swimming around and will work on changing his diet.
They plan to start feeding him raw chicken to get him to eating more like a gator should eat saying that his owner had been feeding him fried chicken and fish sticks instead of things like raw chicken, fish and birds.
"He would be considered legally blind. Because of what Albert had been feed all these years, he grew some neurological issues on his spine. It's caused him to not be able to stand on all fours," Saurage told 12News.
Along with Albert's blindness and spinal issues the Gator Country staff say he's overweight.
"With Albert's health condition I'm really surprised he made the trip," said Saurage.
Saurage says Albert's injuries are not reversible, but they plan to help him get active and swimming again.
"We understand injured alligators we do this all the time. I think that's why New York chose us," he said.
The large reptile was seized from his owner, Tony Cavallaro, in March 2024, by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, according to file stories from our sister station, WGRZ, in Buffalo.
Cavallaro, a reptile fan, first got Albert at a reptile show in the 90's when the gator was 2-months old. He ended up building an addition to his home complete with an indoor, in-ground pool for Albert.
Albert and Cavallaro's plight caught the attention of his neighbors and many in Hamburg. Yard signs have popped up all over Cavallaro's block pleading for Albert to come home and T-shirts have been made in Albert's honor also demanding his return.
Cavallaro had a license for the gator until 2021, when it expired. He says he spent a year trying to get the permit renewed.
He claims that the New York DEC did not respond to him.
The New York DEC, in a statement, said it "provided Mr. Cavallaro with a generous amount of time to come into compliance and respond to the Notice of Incomplete Application sent to him outlining the deficiencies."
The DEC went on in the statement to say that "Albert wasn't seized because of his demeanor or physical condition, but instead because of state law and regulations."
"We're going to bring an action in court to at least challenge whether or not they were right in taking Albert," said Cavallaro's lawyer Michael D'Amico.
The department received an anonymous compliant that Cavallaro allowed the public near the alligator. The state also updated its animal laws and after 2021 they failed to renew Cavallaro's permit to keep Albert.
"If laws changed I should be grandfathered in," Cavallaro said.
Albert has several health issues, including being blind in both eyes and spinal complications according to WGRZ file stories.
In it's statement the DEC said that just before they removed the gator, they received photos and information showing that Cavallaro allowed "unauthorized and close, physical contact between the public, including children, and the 750-pound alligator."
The statement went on to say "DEC does not tolerate endangering the public or wildlife, including activities that put children and adults into direct contact with an animal classified in law and regulations as dangerous.
Specifically, the DEC said it removed Albert after receiving that information to protect "the health of both the public and the animal."
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This is a developing story. We will update with more if and when we receive more confirmed information.