BROWNSVILLE, Texas -- Along the palm-lined waterways of this growing border city, people and alligators may soon learn whether they can share the same turf.
It is a question raised by the recent discovery of a 2-foot-long juvenile American alligator in the back yard of a city worker.
Alligators, native to the alluvial river delta that forms the Rio Grande Valley, are making a gradual comeback in Brownsville and in other parts of Texas where they once were hunted for their hides.
While the largest group of gators in South Texas resides on a federal wildlife refuge in eastern Cameron County, others are turning up more frequently in drainage ditches and small lakes in residential areas.
"If we can live with Africanized bees, then alligators will be a piece of cake," said Nadine Hall, environmental coordinator for the Brownsville Health Department, who expects that other alligators will move into the city's waterways. "It's mostly a matter of time."
A small alligator was caught two weeks ago by an animal control officer after the 4-year-old daughter of city park employee Guadalupe Rivera tried to pick up what she thought was a toy in her back yard. Her father saw the object move and, realizing it was an alligator, pulled her away.
The Rivera family lives near a resaca, the Spanish name for old channels, similar to bayous, left by a meandering Rio Grande. They are now kept full of water and form part of the city's storm sewer system.
City officials say the alligator was the first captured along the 40 miles of resacas that wind in and around Brownsville, but residents say they have seen them there for years.
"We used to have a big one living in our resaca," said Peter L. Heinz, who lives near the Resaca de la Palmas east of town. "He used to come up in the yard, and my dad fed him canned dog food. He was a big one, between 6 or 8 feet long."
Terry Turney, a wildlife biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's alligator program, said that as the alligator recovery continues, their range in the Rio Grande Valley will be expanded by young males forced out of their nests once they are old enough to fend for themselves.
"Alligators are territorial like most wildlife species," he said, "and the young males get pushed out of the dominant male's territory."
In April, local officials roped a feisty 12-foot alligator on a farm road near Rio Hondo, a few miles from the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. The 45,000-acre refuge, on the shores of the Laguna Madre bay, is home to 50 to 70 American alligators -- some of them 14 feet long -- that live in ponds and lakes.