Last week, workers at South River Rentals spotted a weird-looking creature while working on boats. They thought it was an alligator.

Ever since, people who work and play around South River's Gingerville Creek have been looking for the reptile.

Riverkeeper Diana Muller of the South River Federation finally got a good enough look to positively identify the creature as a caiman, a small member of the crocodilia order that's sometimes kept as a pet.

"It looks like a small log floating on the river and then it swims away," Muller said.

Unfortunately there's still no lasting visual evidence of the creature. Like all good mystery monsters, this guy (or gal) apparently is camera-shy.

"We haven't gotten a picture of it," said Cindy Wallace, Muller's coworker at the South River Federation. "It's hard to get him on film."

The appearance of the maybe-alligator-really-a-caiman has drawn attention to normally quiet Gingerville Creek, including radio and TV news reports.

"It's hilarious, but I think it's calming down," said Muller.

The upshot of the situation, though, is that it gives Muller an opening to talk about how dumped pets can damage the ecosystem.

"People buy these things. 'Oh isn't that cute?' All of a sudden, it's 3-feet long and they can't take care of it," Muller said.

Non-native species can wreak havoc on the environment, eating up certain plants or critters or crowding out native species.

Consider the toothy northern snakehead fish, the grass-gobbling mute swan and the marsh-munching nutria rodent - all captive species that got loose in Maryland and caused big problems.

A single caiman might not do too much damage, and it might die anyway when the weather turns cold. But if people keep dumping pets like this, Muller said, it's "just one more added thing" harming already-troubled waters.

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