Butler reptile keeper searches for missing alligator
Austin Randall, of Butler, has been keeping reptiles for four or five years now. Until last month, the only notable accident he could recall was when an alligator bit him on his right index finger, severing a nerve and causing him to lose all feeling in that digit.
Recently, however, Randall has been dealing with pain of a different kind. In late August, his 2-foot pet alligator, Neo, escaped from his grasp while he was being transported to a friend’s home in Armstrong County.
The incident happened on Aug. 29 when Randall was taking Neo to Dominic Hayward, a friend of his in Kiskiminetas Township.
Randall is in the process of looking for a new home closer to the rest of his family in Williamsport, Pa. At the same time, he was looking to build a larger enclosure for the growing Neo, but didn’t want to expend the effort to do so in his current house — just to tear it down before moving to Williamsport.
“I have the time, I have the money, I have everything I need,” Randall said. “The problem is … I'm not going to build a bigger enclosure here and then, when I move, tear it down, move it, then build it back up over there.”
The plan was for Hayward to take care of Neo until Randall’s planned move out of Butler. Unfortunately, during the transfer, an accident allowed Neo to escape from his container.
“He was in a bin, and when he was in the bin, he bumped the lid and my leg must have unlatched the latch when I was setting it down … I must have bumped it or something,” Randall said. “I know that when I pulled the bin out of the car, it was latched.”
Randall says that this is the first time one of his reptiles has ever escaped on him.
An alligator was reportedly found swimming in the Kiski River by kayakers on Sunday, Sept. 3. The sighting was reported to local police.
Neo is one of possibly “two or more” alligators in the Kiski River, according to Kiskiminetas Township police.
Lee Bartolicious, chief of Kiskiminetas Township police, said Thursday that his department is aware of Neo’s escape and are working with animal control officers to capture him.
“Based on sightings and the new information, we believe there could be two or more alligators on the loose now,” Bartolicious said.
Since the disappearance, Randall said he has been conducting daily searches of the area and scouring all news reports for any clues to where Neo may have run off to.
“(People are) basically calling and reporting it to the police station, which is good. That's what we want them to do,” Randall said. “We hear about it in the news reports and then have to go down, basically where Neo was sighted, to go look for him.”
In case anyone happens to run into Neo, Randall advises them not to try and catch the gator themselves and instead contact the proper authorities. However, he said he is confident that the two-foot gator poses no serious harm to humans.
“A two-foot alligator is not going to take your leg off. It’s not going to take your arm off. It’s not going to kill you,” Randall said. “But if people see Neo, they need to basically get ahold of somebody that would be able to catch it instead of trying to catch it themselves.”
Until Neo’s escape, he was one of several exotic reptiles at the Randall household. He shared the home with a sulcata tortoise named Big Sandy, a boa constrictor named Daisy, a puff adder, a Cayman crocodile, a snapping turtle and two ball pythons.
“A lot of people like their coffee in the morning. Mine is a cobra striking at me. It's the adrenaline for me that basically gets me going,” said Randall. “Do I want my cobra to strike at me? No, but if it was to, it gets the blood pumping.”
For unspecified personal reasons, Randall said he doesn’t keep as many reptiles as he used to. At his peak, he had more than 60, the majority of them being venomous snakes.
“I kept mainly the ones that are near and dear to me, but a lot of the other ones had to go to other places,” Randall said.
Neo is not the first alligator to be sighted near the Kiski River this summer. Earlier in August, an alligator, which became known as Chomper, was also spotted in the area. Chomper was eventually captured and transferred to a reptile rescue facility in Pittsburgh.
Although it’s been a week and a half since Neo escaped, Randall is still hopeful that his baby alligator can be found.
“I love all my animals as they are my kids,” Randall said. “If somebody's kid threw a glass jar at their leg … you're not gonna love your kid any less. I don't love my animal any less because it bit me.”
