TOWNSEND, Mass. (AP) – Police have captured the second of a pair of alligators that escaped from their owner here earlier this week.

The 6-foot long reptile was corralled Friday in waist deep water by Michael Ralbovsky, a reptile specialist who works with the Massachusetts Environmental Police. Ralbovsky seized the animal by its front and back legs after it darted into a swampy patch of woods.

“I know how to handle them and wrangle them,” Ralbovsky told The Boston Globe.

Like the alligator captured earlier, the animal’s mouth was taped shut.

The alligators escaped while the owner, whom police did not identify, tried to transport them. The first alligator was captured Tuesday and police didn’t know a second alligator was on the loose. But the owner, apparently concerned the second alligator was at large, called WHDH-TV to anonymously report another alligator was free. Police tracked down the owner and spoke to him, and he acknowledged a second animal was on the lam.

Owning an alligator is illegal in Massachusetts. Vanessa Gulati, a spokeswoman for the state’s Environmental Police, said authorities have not filed charges against the owner, but expect to.

The second alligator, which weighed between 70 and 80 pounds, was captured after a woman spotted it in her back yard. Ralbovsky said the animal will join the other alligator at Rainforest Reptile Shows in Beverly and will probably be shipped to Florida.

The alligator search had some residents of this New Hampshire border town on edge, and others just shaking their heads.

“If you had told me two weeks ago that I’d be watching an alligator hunt in Townsend,” Town Administrator Greg Barnes told The Lowell Sun, “I’d ask you what you were smoking.”