Jay Young greets Jaxson with a kiss, even though the 8-foot alligator “tried to bite my hand off” when he first introduced himself. Photo courtesy of Jay Young.
When Jay Young says he’s busy at the moment, he means it.
“Well, I’m about three seconds away from grabbing a 7-foot alligator by the mouth,” he said Thursday. “But I can talk real quick.”
Ill-timed phone answering aside, Young, the owner of the San Luis Valley’s , is probably the best man for the job when an alligator needs help.
Last week he drove his family’s minivan 2,200 miles in 48 hours to rescue Jaxson, the 8-foot alligator a few months ago. The 37-year-old gator was held in the Los Angeles Zoo, but she wasn’t working there. Young, fearing she would be put down, raced across the country to save not just Jaxson, but two other alligators recently seized by officials in southern California.
On Thursday, Jaxson was eating fish and enjoying the geothermal pools at Young’s park.
“She’s adjusted right away,” Young said.
After Young retrieved Jaxson, he drove to the house where the gator had lived for 37 years. Her owner had raised her since she was a hatchling.
“She just sat there on the porch for a couple hours with Jaxson in her lap,” Young said. “Jaxson didn’t like me very much. She tried to bite me when I met her. But when she was there with the owner, she was cool as a kitten.”
The family counted Jaxson as a pet. Turns out it was an illegal pet. Officials found Jaxson in a box in the family’s backyard with two dead cats. The owner told Young – and police – that someone had been poisoning cats in her Van Nuys neighborhood and the sick cats must have crawled inside the box to die. That’s why Jaxson seemed so reticent to enter the box recently, she told Young.
“She was made out to be this monster,” Young said. “She loved Jaxson. She said ‘I thought I would be crying when you left with her but I’m really comfortable with this and I’m really happy she’s going to live with you.”
Despite reports of marijuana-hunting police in states neighboring Colorado scrutinizing cars with Colorado plates, Young didn’t get pulled over. Darn. That would have made for an interesting roadside shakedown.
But the trio of gators weren’t perfect passengers.
“I ended up wrestling alligators in the van all night trying to calm them down,” Young said.
