A female alligator who made national headlines after being discovered in a lake in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in February has died.
Godzilla, as rescuers named her, had been receiving veterinary treatment at the Bronx Zoo for a myriad of issues. The alligator had been “lethargic” and “extremely emaciated” when she was found in the New York park on a day when temperatures were in the 30s ― far too cold for an alligator.
Veterinarians also later found a rubber bathtub stopper in the reptile’s stomach, suggesting she had been previously kept as a pet in a bathtub and subsequently released into the park.
“A necropsy revealed chronic and severe weight loss, extreme anemia, and infections in her intestine and skin,” the zoo said Friday in a statement announcing the alligator’s death. “She also had a chronic ulcer of her stomach caused by the rubber stopper. Despite the intensive care, the alligator was so emaciated, debilitated, and anemic, her immune system was not as strong as it needed to be, and she succumbed to those infections.”
The 4-foot-long alligator had been spotted at the lake by park maintenance workers on Feb. 19, Gothamist reported at the time. Park patrol and rangers rescued the animal from the frigid lake and transported her to an Animal Care Centers of NYC shelter before she was transferred to the Bronx Zoo.
Shortly after the alligator’s capture, NYC parks spokesperson Dan Kastanis urged people not to abandon pets of any kind in the park.
“Parks are not suitable homes for animals not indigenous to those parks ― domesticated or otherwise,” he said in a statement.