Severed alligator head gives dog-walker a shock

A painter and decorator described his shock today at finding the severed head of an alligator while he was out walking his dogs.

Peter Lumb, 59, of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, found the skull and a section of the reptile's jaw while he was walking his two border collies on a hillside in the Crosland Moor area.

The bones were checked out by experts at Manchester Museum, where his daughter Catherine works, and found to be that of an American alligator, officially an alligator mississippiensis, which is usually found in the south-eastern United States.

Fragments of skin found with the bones indicated they had not been there long before they were discovered.

Describing his find, Mr Lumb said: "I was taking my dogs for a walk, on to this hillside where I've taken them for years, and I think it was the dogs that sniffed them out.

"I saw the jawbone and the skull next to it and took it home for the wife to have a look.

"I was a bit shocked to find them, a bit taken aback. I was thinking 'What the hell are they doing there?'"

Mr Lumb and his wife, Linda, 59, discussed the possibility of the jaw section being that of a fox or a badger but decided the teeth were too sharp to be from either animal.

After going back to retrieve the skull the next day and thinking they had found a crocodile skull, they passed it on to the museum, which confirmed the remains belonged to an alligator that could have been 6ft long without its tail.

Rebecca Machin, curatorial assistant of natural environments at Manchester Museum, who examined the remains, said it looked as though the creature might have been "butchered".

She said: "What's odd about it is the back of the head is sawn off, and it looks like someone sawed it off after it died.

"It looks like it's been butchered, really."

Miss Machin said that, without forensic tests, she could not know how the animal died but added: "I imagine that it was kept by someone rather than living in the wild.

"Someone must know something about it. I can't imagine anyone has stumbled across an alligator before."

Mr Lumb said he remembered hearing around 30 years ago of a Huddersfield man who had a pet alligator in a tank, but that he did not live close to where he made his discovery.

He added: "I've been back to see if I can find any more parts but there's nothing. Where it's come from I've no idea."

A Kirklees Council spokesman said: "Kirklees currently has no dangerous animals registered and we can only assume that somebody has been keeping the alligator which grew too big to be looked after safely."