NY man fights to get back 750-pound pet alligator after state seizes beast that loves people but ‘not to eat’

Losing your favorite pet really bites!

An upstate New York man said he’s fighting to get his beloved 750-pound pet alligator back from state agents who seized it from his house in a raid where they treated him like “some kind of drug kingpin.”

Tony Cavallaro told The Post that he’s confident “thousands of supporters” will help him win back 34-year-old alligator Albert who was seized from his Hamburg home by state Department of Environmental Conservation workers last week.

“My God, they make me look like a drug lord, like Escobar, that’s what they treated it like,” Cavallaro said in a phone interview.

“What reason do they have to go to this extreme?” he told The Post. “They had full body armor two assault shotguns … It looks like a DEA drug bust of some kingpin. They looked like a SWAT team for a terrorist attack.”

An online petition asking for Albert to be reunited with his owner has drawn over 100,000 signatures, and supporters have begun producing “Free Albert” T-shirts and bumper stickers to spread the word and support Cavallaro’s legal fight.

The DEC showed up at Cavallaro’s home in Hamburg, a suburb about 15 miles south of downtown Buffalo, on March 13 with a warrant alleging he had “allowed members of the public to get into the water to pet the unsecured alligator.”

After taping Albert’s jaws shut, agents loaded the 11-foot-long gator into a van and carted it off to a temporary home with a licensed caretaker – but Cavallaro thinks the DEC were the only ones likely to harm his pet.

“My poor alligator, he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s such a gentle giant, it’s unbelievable,” Cavallaro said. “Who knows what kind of damage they could have done to him.”

Cavallaro said he has owned Albert since the gator was just 2 months old, and after years of showing him in “educational shows” retired the aging beast in a large indoor pen. The luxurious pen came complete with a pond, specialized windows and lighting – which he attached to his house, he said.

Word of the unusual pet spread throughout the neighborhood, and then throughout the Buffalo community, leading to visits from curious onlookers who Cavallaro would occasionally allow to enter the pen and give Albert a pat – and sometimes even jump in the gator’s pool with him.

It was those visits which allegedly led the DEC to take action, alleging Cavallaro was “seriously endangering the public.”

Officials also cited him for keeping Albert without a permit since 2021 – but Cavallaro said he had one for years but was met with resistance when he tried to work with the DEC to renew it after animal ownership laws changed.

Cavallaro conceded that he allowed some people to pet and swim with Albert – there’s a photo of his own mother standing alongside the gator featured prominently on his Facebook – but he insists he never put anybody in harm’s way and vehemently denied officials’ claims that the animal is blind.

“[Albert] loves company, and I guess I let my compassion get in the way of the law. But I have never endangered nobody,” Cavallaro said, adding that he didn’t let anybody near the gator who he didn’t know and trust.

Cavallaro, who described Albert as having a “huge personality” and enjoying cuddling, says everybody who encounters the gator knows he’s harmless.

“If you met him you’d love him … He just loves people. He loves everybody. Not to eat, but to be with,” he said. After the seizure, he said a friend told him, “You think I’d get the pool with an alligator that size if I didn’t know for a fact that he was gentle as can be?”
The Post has reached out the DEC for comment.

The alligator lover said he’s overwhelmed by the love for Albert.

“I knew I was gonna get a lot of support, I knew that because everybody loves my alligator,” Cavallaro said, adding that he thinks the DEC is keeping Albert’s location quiet to keep demonstrators away.

“If they found out where he was there would probably be 20,000 people outside of there with protest signs, ‘Free albert! Free Albert!’”

He thinks those supporters will turn out in full force when he gets his day in court.

“It’s gonna be like the biggest peaceful protest you ever saw in the whole country,” he said.