When it comes to the way we treat so-called “nuisance” wildlife, the crime rarely measures up to the punishment delivered. We witnessed this judicial schizophrenia in May when an area police officer killed a mother deer because of a complaint call that she had head-butted a local college student – though it was widely, and wrongly, reported by the news media that a small child was involved.

It turned out in this case that the alleged offender was a local “pet” named Koko, raised by humans after her mother was struck and killed on the road. The supposed crime committed by Koko was never investigated. But bullets were dispatched without question, ending her life.

Now the 9-foot alligator gunned down by a Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Warden in San Antonio this week was certainly nobody’s pet. Just as Mother Nature intended, the healthy creature was living free in area waters. The animal was free, that is, until it was determined the creature was “lurking” near an apartment building. She was “showing signs of aggression” news accounts related, and was “unafraid to approach humans.”

The sentence for such behavior was death.

One can only assume the statements made by the game warden are true, even though they were not supported by any of the media accounts of the incident. Perhaps the “aggressive” signs and her lack of fear were extrapolated by the agent from the one thing the animal did: walk toward the apartment building from the water. Was she fleeing the agent? Something else? It is unclear.

Among those residents interviewed by the San Antonio Express-News supposedly at risk none had ever seen alligators said to be in the area and weren’t particularly concerned. Even so, the question begging an answer is if a “lurking” alligator, living near people, showing undefined signs of aggression, should be a dead alligator.

There must be stronger criteria than that within the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for animals determined to pose a risk to humans! If lurking is a crime, which animals will we spare. For lurking is all in the eye of the beholder.

Alligators, once almost eradicated in most of the Southern United States, are becoming an unavoidable reality in Texas again. That is something to be celebrated. Many states (including Texas) have opened up alligator hunting, though many have rightly argued such practice is not only cruel to the alligators but puts people stalking the animals at risk.

That’s right. Alligators can be dangerous – particularly when you crash into their wetland territory to pick a fight. Still there have only been 20 fatal attacks in the United States since 1970.

In this case at hand, the alligator was likely flushed from her traditional habitat by the recent heavy rains and would have returned to her territory as the extended damp drained away again. The response was wildly out of proportion to the actions of the alligator. Even nine-footer alligators can be trapped and transported when they pose a risk. More observation with the potential for relocation was the reasonable course of action in this case.

When we are so fast on the draw, so quick to condemn our nonhuman animal neighbors, it begs another question of all of us. What kind of world are we creating? What kind of world are we losing?