Gotham Gator Grab

A day after a TV crew captured what they thought was an alligator on videotape, Mike Bailey and his wife Tina caught the creature — which turned out to be a 2-foot-long caiman — in less than 20 minutes Thursday night.

"For this situation, he was a pretty easy catch," said Mike Bailey, a 23-year-old wildlife worker from the Seminole Tribe's reservation near Hollywood, Fla. "As long as you can visualize and see them, they are not too hard to get hold of."

The reptile had been on the loose since Saturday.

Bailey arrived on his first trip to New York with much hoopla from his publicist, Chuck Malkus. Malkus had said Bailey, who does four shows a day at a Florida tourist attraction, could capture the reptile within two days.

On Thursday night, the Baileys briefly surveyed the 1-acre lake where the caiman, a member of the crocodile family, had been spotted. They hopped into a canoe and shone a flashlight in the reeds while they circled the lake.

After about 15 minutes, they stopped the canoe at the lake's northern end. Tina Bailey lunged into the reeds and emerged with the reptile in her bare hands. There was no struggle.

"She managed to slip her hand up about this close and reach down and catch him, nice and gentle," Mike Bailey said. "No hooks, no ropes — we try to be humane as possible."

A decision on the reptile's future home — the wild or a zoo — was to be made Friday.

"He will be given a good home," Bailey said. "He will not be turned into a purse."

By CHAKA FERGUSON
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