By Lauren Fitzpatrick
Chicago Sun-Times
FORD HEIGHTS, Ill. — It wasn’t for the ladies, insisted a Ford Heights man busted for keeping a 4-foot alligator in his kitchen, allegedly to woo women.
Dewayne Yarbrough, parodied in overseas news reports and on “Saturday Night Live” for keeping an alligator because, as he told police, the ladies love it, pleaded guilty Tuesday to possessing a dangerous animal.
Yarbrough said he just wanted some sort of interesting pet after his first and only court appearance in Markham on the misdemeanor arrest.
He’s allergic to cats, he doesn’t like dogs and snakes don’t do it for him. So he went to Indiana where gators are legally sold and bought one some five years ago.
“I like exotic animals,” Yarbrough said.
The 43-year-old dodged captivity himself. He will serve a year’s conditional discharge; the American alligator he kept in a tank in his kitchen was confiscated when he was arrested in May.
“It was a matter of time before it bites somebody,” Cook County Judge C. J. Donnelly snapped at Yarbrough in a lengthy tirade. “What were you going to do then?”
“Throw it near a swamp,” Yarbrough replied.
And years down the road when the reptile reached its prime size, some 10 feet, Donnelly wondered, what then?
“I never thought that far,” Yarbrough said.
Yarbrough, who lives alone in the 800 block of East 11th Place, said he never determined whether his scaly friend was a gentleman or lady gator.
And he never named his pet, either. No sense in bothering about a name, he said after court, since it’s not like the animal would come when called.
“You can’t tame alligators,” Yarbrough said.
Dewayne Yarbrough, 43, of Ford Heights will serve a year’s conditional discharge.
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