Massachusetts environmental police are investigating an alligator carcass that was found on Martha’s Vineyard over the weekend. 

The dead gator was found on Saturday at Sepiessa Point Reservation in West Tisbury, a police spokesperson confirmed.

While the Vineyard has many different types of animals, alligators are not one that is found naturally here. In the U.S. the species typically ranges from the northern coasts of North Carolina to central Texas. 

The large, muscular reptiles are normally found in slow-moving freshwater, such as swamps and lakes. They can also live in saltwater marshes, but can only tolerate them for brief periods. 

Environmental police said they are working with West Tisbury animal control to determine how the alligator arrived on the Island, and because the investigation is ongoing, the agency could not comment further. 

West Tisbury animal control officer Kate Hoffman said the alligator appeared to be between four and five feet long, but she couldn't comment further.

It is illegal to own any crocodilian species as a pet in Massachusetts, including alligators. 

The idea of an alligator being on the Vineyard, while far-fetched, has come up before. In August 1927, the Gazette reported that there were suspicions of an alligator at Chilmark Pond after huge reptilian tracks were sighted in the sand of Methodist Cross Road, along with the unusual spectacle of a sheep swimming in the pond. 

“At the time [farmer John D. Bassett] saw this sheep there were no dogs in the vicinity and the happening is only accountable by the theory that the sheep was frightened into a panic by something which it encountered upon the point of beach and which cut off its return to safety by way of the narrow neck of dry sand,” the Gazette wrote. 

The article also noted that another gator, believed to have escaped from a vessel, was found in West Chop some years earlier.  

Anyone with information about the dead alligator that was found in West Tisbury is asked to call environmental police at 800-632-8075.