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DALLAS (Reuters) - Nature ran amok at a Dallas high school over summer vacation, bringing alligators, poisonous snakes and bobcats to campus grounds, school officials said on Thursday.
Beavers apparently dammed up a stream flowing near A. Maceo Smith High School, creating a 15-acre (6 hectare) swamp that became home to two alligators that moved in while classes were out for the summer.
Dallas animal control supervisor Tim Hawkins told reporters that he has seen two alligators, about four feet to six feet long, in the swamp.
Principal Dwain Govan asked animal control to remove the alligators from the school's back yard, so they stay off of the school's football and softball fields. Heavy rains over the summer caused the swamp to encroach on the fields.
"We have asked the city to put up some fencing to make sure that the alligators do not come up on to our practice fields," he said.
The fences will be up before classes start at month's end. But those students who have returned early for extracurricular activities, such as band member Likiesha Edwards, found something more than the return of classes to worry about.
"I think it's very dangerous for football players and people like me in the band, to go out there and practice," she told reporters.
Hawkins said that besides the gators, the swamp is home to poisonous water snakes, bobcats, coyotes, gray foxes, raccoons, beavers, possums and a rookery of egrets.
Dallas Independent School District spokesman Donald Claxton said hunters are searching the swamp for the gators, while others will set up snake traps, he said.
Animal control officials said they did not know where the alligators, rarely found in north Texas, came from.
Beavers apparently dammed up a stream flowing near A. Maceo Smith High School, creating a 15-acre (6 hectare) swamp that became home to two alligators that moved in while classes were out for the summer.
Dallas animal control supervisor Tim Hawkins told reporters that he has seen two alligators, about four feet to six feet long, in the swamp.
Principal Dwain Govan asked animal control to remove the alligators from the school's back yard, so they stay off of the school's football and softball fields. Heavy rains over the summer caused the swamp to encroach on the fields.
"We have asked the city to put up some fencing to make sure that the alligators do not come up on to our practice fields," he said.
The fences will be up before classes start at month's end. But those students who have returned early for extracurricular activities, such as band member Likiesha Edwards, found something more than the return of classes to worry about.
"I think it's very dangerous for football players and people like me in the band, to go out there and practice," she told reporters.
Hawkins said that besides the gators, the swamp is home to poisonous water snakes, bobcats, coyotes, gray foxes, raccoons, beavers, possums and a rookery of egrets.
Dallas Independent School District spokesman Donald Claxton said hunters are searching the swamp for the gators, while others will set up snake traps, he said.
Animal control officials said they did not know where the alligators, rarely found in north Texas, came from.
