Inside info on Raphael the Alligator

By Dan Hogan 6/30/98

Some of you guys may not know about Raphael. He was kind of a neighborhood secret for about as long as I can remember- certainly since high school, and probably longer. An eccentric couple who live around the corner from my parent's house in Solana Beach got an alligator about 25 years ago (or so). Raphael was a little guy then, but over the years grew into a big hairy deal (so to speak). There are lots of good stories about him. Jill and I last stopped by to see him about a year ago, and there he was sunning himself on the lawn in his backyard- all ten feet and 300 pounds of him. I have photos of Jill petting him. No kidding. But it seems that Raphael got himself into trouble a couple of months ago when he decided to go for a walk (pea brain that he his) and ended up in the yard of a neighbor who didn't know about him. The story Steve found fills in the subsequent events about how the sheriff stormed the house en masse and shanghai'd him off to the SD Zoo. Steve suggested that certain constitutional rights and due process may have been casualties of the situation, and that may lead to further good stuff. But it was too bad for Raphael.

Raphael was always a curious mix for us of simulaneous danger and at the same time domestication. We always kept in mind that he was probably little more than an eating machine, but to look at him in the eye, one would get an impression of sentience that tended to draw people closer. As one did that, the eccentric lady would caution to only walk up to Raphael from certain directions. Walking straight up to his face was not advised. But she would invite visitors to walk up to Raphael from the side and pet him. He liked to be rubbed on the top of his head, and would even turn towards the massager like a cat or dog would when scratched behind the ears.

He only ate during the warm months of the year. When he did, he'd usually get a couple pounds of chicken necks. The lady said he wasn't very fussy about what he got, but he seemed to be partial to pigeons. I don't know how she knew that. During the cooler months, he would not eat at all, instead living on fat stored up in his tail. He lived in the backyard of one of the houses near the intersection of Marview Drive and Canyon Drive. The house was built sometime in the 50's and is nothing special. The eccentric couple built a shallow, concrete lined pool for him, but whenever I saw him, he was laying up on the grass sunning himself. This backyard is a little larger than average, but otherwise unremarkable. It has the usual chain link fence around it. Raphael only got out if someone carelessly left the gate open (like any other pet). The lady told me that Raphael was possessive about his pool, but otherwise not a burden. When it was time to mow the lawn, he'd lumber out of the way into his pool. She once showed me some photos of her two toddler sized daughters swimming in the pool with Raphael, but that was when he was only six feet long, or so. One time, Jill and I stopped by to say hello, and they had a Chihuahua dog that must have had some experience with Raphael because the dog kept a respectful distance. But on a subsequent visit about two years later, the Chihuahua was gone, replaced with a different small dog (this time, a long haired, little white lap dog that had the good sense to not bark much). We wondered, but didn't ask.

There must certainly have been some knowledge of Raphael's presence at city hall. One time when he was only seven feet long or so, he decided to go out for a walk and ended up in the yard of somebody on Canyon Drive who went "EEEEKKK!", and called the paramedics. The paramedics came, said this wasn't their department, and went away. A few days later, a man from the fish and game department knocked on her door and said, "Lady, you can't have an alligator here." But she'd done her homework, and replied, "Oh yeah? Show me." So the man pulled out his book from his hip pocket. The book said you can't have lions. And the book said you can't have bears. But the book didn't say you can't have an alligator. So the man from the fish and game department put his book back into his pocket, turned away and never came back.

This is second hand information, but I believe that Raphael was first acquired through one of those offers on the back of a cereal box about 30-40 years ago where you could send in some box tops and money, and they'd send you whatever (please allow six to eight weeks for delivery). Although I can't prove it, I think the longtime rumors of alligators in the New York sewers has the same genesis. But this lady decided to keep Raphael, rather than flush him down. I for one was always glad, and I think that most people in the neighborhood that knew about him agreed. He was a great source of dinner conversation. Newcomers would understandably be skeptical, saying this was all just a fish story. But we'd take them around the corner and knock on the eccentric couple's front door and ask if we could see Raphael. They'd usually accommodate, and walk us through their house into the backyard, and there he'd be. Raphael was no fish story.

I wonder how he's going to fare at the Zoo? He's had a relatively soft life, and even though he's going to be about the biggest alligator at the Zoo, he's not likely to be as tough as some of the others. If there's some status heirarchy that gets established among alligators, I hope he fares OK.