MIDDLEBOROUGH, Mass. —
State police said a local man dropped off an alligator in a bait bucket on Friday night.The man said he spied the alligator in a marshy area of the Nemasket River off Walnut Street in Middleborough.“Obviously we were a little surprised. It’s not every day that someone brings an alligator into the barracks, so we were taken aback,” said Trooper Joseph Baker.The alligator is about 2-feet long, clearly a baby. Police said the find does raise a lot of questions — where did he come from and are there more of them?”We don’t want any children to encounter him if they’re playing down by the river,” said Baker.The alligator was given to a reptile specialist who will determine its origin and, perhaps, how it came to be in the river.It is illegal in Massachusetts to keep an alligator as a pet.