{"id":574634,"date":"2026-04-09T21:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T21:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/574634\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T21:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T21:24:11","slug":"a-buffalo-area-man-ends-his-fight-to-reclaim-albert-his-12-foot-alligator-seized-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/574634\/","title":{"rendered":"A Buffalo-area man ends his fight to reclaim Albert, his 12-foot alligator seized in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">An upstate New York man who <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/alligator-seized-new-york-albert-0fb6a00ffc1bed34ce2ff9a753a2d893\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:had his alligator seized;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;had his alligator seized&quot;}\" class=\"link \">had his alligator seized<\/a> after sharing a home for more than three decades has given up his court fight to get back the reptile he affectionately named Albert.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Tony Cavallaro sued the state Department of Environmental Conservation after officers met him with a warrant in the driveway of his home in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg in March 2024. The officers sedated the 12-foot (3.6-meter), 750-pound (340-kilogram) alligator and drove him away in a van.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Albert, who lived in an indoor swimming pool, eventually ended up in a sanctuary in Texas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Cavallaro sued over the state&#8217;s denial of a license to keep Albert. But the 66-year-old said Thursday that the legal action had consumed his life for two years. With no quick end in sight, he decided last month that he couldn&#8217;t deal with the exhausting battle anymore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cThey were never going to give me this alligator back, and it was going to cost me a ton more money. Another year and a half \u2014 at least \u2014 of stress,\u201d Cavallaro said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Cavallaro\u2019s license to keep Albert had expired in 2021, according to the department. But even if it had been renewed, Cavallaro had let other people pet the alligator and even get in the pool with him, providing grounds for the removal under the rules for keeping animals classified as dangerous, the agency said after the seizure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The seized alligator had blindness in both eyes and spinal complications, among other health issues, according to the state.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Cavallaro has insisted that Albert was \u201cjust a big baby\u201d who had never shown signs of aggression. He bought the alligator at an Ohio reptile show when it was two months old and considered him an \u201cemotional support animal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Cavallaro said he has not seen Albert since the animal was taken away, though he has seen photographs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cI\u2019m not at peace. I don\u2019t think I ever will be,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m very angry about the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An upstate New York man who had his alligator seized after sharing a home for more than three&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[15300,6619,252763,252764,79,252762,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-574634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-albert","9":"tag-alligator","10":"tag-cavallaro","11":"tag-indoor-swimming-pool","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-tony-cavallaro","14":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}