Baltimore Sun-Baltimore City Teen Captures Alligator In Park

photo courtesy of Baltimore Sun

(Story by Frank D. Roylance)

In the end, it was chicken on a string that brought a wayward "alligator" out of the Patapsco River.

A two-hour search on Monday evening by Natural Resources Police failed to find a trace of the critter. But Eric Hammack Jr., the 16-year-old fisherman who first reported the reptile on Sunday, returned to the pond off Belle Grove Road in Patapsco Valley State Park on Tuesday. He had decided to try luring the gator with a hunk of chicken on a string.

"It was a chicken wing," said Hammack, who lives nearby in Pumphrey and fishes in the park often. He pulled the meat off the bones and tied a string and a fishing hook to them. Then he tied the string to a tree, and threw the chicken bones into the river.

"I fished for, like, an hour and a half," he said. Then he had to leave for a while. And when he came back, there was a 2 1/2-to-3-foot caiman on the line. Caimans are close relatives of alligators.

(click here to read the full story on the Baltimore Sun website)