A viral video has people in Boston looking for a tiny alligator in the Charles River. The small gator was spotted over the weekend and caught on video by a couple passing by. 

"I wasn't necessarily scared. My girlfriend was like, 'I don't want you to touch it. You don't know what could be in the water," said Trevor Rochelle, who took the video.  

Rochelle likes to fish in the area, but he didn't expect to catch a gator on camera.

"I thought it was fake, I didn't believe it," he said.

In the video, Rochelle is seen poking the alligator with a stick to see if it's alive before it retreats back into the water. People on social media began questioning if the video was actually AI, but the stick that is in the video was still there when we met Rochelle for an interview Tuesday. 

"That was the first thing people thought. You're joking. This isn't real. The video was the realistic piece," said Rochelle. "Believe me, it was real. I am not pulling anyone's leg." 

He spotted the small gator in one of the two lagoons that sit in the Esplanade and connect to the Charles River. After the encounter, Rochelle contacted Boston Animal Care and Control for help. 

"They thought I was crazy. Then I told them I live near MIT, and they thought maybe he isn't as dumb as we thought," said Rochelle. "We got the authorities to come out here, and we reported it to who we needed to report it to." 

A spokesperson for Boston Animal Care and Control told WBZ-TV they went out to the river Sunday, but couldn't find the alligator.

Alligators illegal to own in Massachusetts

MassWildlife is aware of the video, and they are working with Boston Animal Control and the Massachusetts Environmental Police to try to capture it. Alligators are not native to the state, and MassWildlife says they cannot survive in cold weather. They are also illegal to own in Massachusetts. 

It turns out, this isn't the first time an alligator has been found in the Charles River. WBZ covered a similar story in 2010, when a canoeist came across one in the Charles in Needham. A local reptile educator from Rainforest Reptile Shows pulled it from the water with his bare hands. 

"It's definitely not native, maybe someone had ill intentions," Rochelle said of the weekend discovery. "We are trying to get the word out and trying to get everyone to come out to find this thing, to find the right home. That's the end goal here." 

Rochelle has named the gator "TT," and he hopes he can survive this week's cold snap long enough to be found.