Story by:  Kelly Caldwell

Have you heard that Lake Wedowee has its own alligator? Well if you haven’t you probably will, the email that was forwarded to me this week told me to send it to everyone I knew so it should arrive to you shortly.

As you know everything that comes over on email is absolute fact. No questions asked, it’s the truth… Yeah, right.

So when I came to work one day this week waiting in my inbox was an email about Lake safety. It had those three little letters that I despise in the subject line...FWD: I click on it and am informed about deer eating alligator on Lake Wedowee. There were pictures and everything.  It said that the “ADNR” helicopter flying over Lake Wedowee took the following pictures.

That is when I knew something was fishy. In my past life as a newspaper reporter, we got an email saying almost the same thing, but it was on Lake Martin. We did a little digging and found the whole thing to be untrue. Thanks to my favorite website, www.snopes.com, the pictures have been verified as real, but the location is not anywhere near Lake Wedowee or Lake Martin. Actually the gator was spotted near the Georgia/South Carolina border.

I scrolled down to finish the email and saw yet another story about an alligator on Lake Wedowee. I was beginning to think we were infested with those reptilian creatures. This time the email said the creature was found near a boat dock and this time the “game warden” had to kill the animal.

The picture with it was disturbing. That gator was absolutely huge!!! The story said that Lake Wedowee homeowners Anita and Charlie Rogers discovered the creature. Only problem, there is no one by that name in the phone book or the records we have of homeowners. I again went to my favorite website and found the story almost identical to the one emailed to me, but this time it was saying the creature was captured in Texas. Alligators are not uncommon in Alabama but most of them live in south Alabama. I have lived in Randolph County for most of my life and have only once heard even a mention of an alligator and that was in a private pond.  So feel safe when swimming. The fact is there have only been 5 cases of an alligator attacking a human in Alabama. While it is possible for alligators to live on Lake Wedowee, they are more common in South Alabama.