United States News
Year internet famous alligator he went missing in Georgia while his family was visiting friends there and his owner believed he had been stolen from a fenced yard in a twisted prank.
Joie Henney, of Jonestown, Pennsylvania, shared a tearful plea for help to find him his pet cat and emotional support animal on the reptile TikTok page.
“Between 4:30 a.m. and 7 a.m., somebody came in and stole Wally,” Henney said on camera in the clip shared Saturday.
“He’s missing. He was kicked out of a fence while we were visiting friends in Georgia. We need all the help we can get to get my boy back,” she said, breaking down. “Please we need your help.”
Henney, who called himself “the father of Wally-gator,” adopted Wally in 2015 when the wild animal was rescued in Florida at 14 months old. He credited the cold-blooded animal for helping him in his battle with depression after the death of several close friends in a 2019 interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Her doctor also approved the 5.5-foot gator as an emotional support animal.
The 8-year-old reptile is a gentle giant who has never tried to bite anyone and can sense people’s emotions, according to Henney.
Wally’s social media pages are filled with videos and photos of people hugging the scaled creature like a small child, cuddling with him, and even giving him kisses on the muzzle. Henney often brings her unusual pet to meet-and-greets and children’s birthday parties, where she poses for photos.
Now Henney said he is distraught without his beloved alligator that went missing on April 21.
I believe the people who stole it from the fenced yard used Wally to prank the unsuspecting owners.
The pranksters left it outside the person’s house and the person reported the sighting to the authorities, who then trapped the alligator and released it into the wild, Henney said in social media.
A caller in the Brunswick area reported a “nuisance alligator” on April 21 — the day Henney said Wally went missing — and a licensed trapper came to catch it, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources said .
That alligator was “released in a remote location,” the agency added while noting that it doesn’t know if it was Wally or not.
Alligators cannot be kept as pets in the state of Georgia, but in Pennsylvania where Wally and Henney live they have no laws against owning alligators.
“Wally is totally different [than other alligators]. There will never be another like him,” Henney said in a past video.
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