A short tribute to Claude, the albino alligator and ambassador for the California Academy of Sciences, from 2008 to his passing a week ago.
I had the pleasure of working with Claude for the six plus years I served in the Academy education department. Most every morning, I would greet Claude on the way to getting coffee in the museum cafeteria.
Often I would see the skilled biologists and aquarists tending to him — or if I was very lucky, doing one of his feedings! You could see the care and tenderness that they had toward him. You might not know, but Claude was mostly blind, a common outcome of albinism in many species. So feeding him his custom made alligator pellets was a challenge!
I loved to chat with museum guests about him. Everyone wanted to know how old he was, what he ate, and of course “is he real?” Many were curious why he didn’t eat the fish in his tank. The quick answer is that, beyond being mostly blind, he also didn’t recognize the fish as food since they were not native to Louisiana, the region he was hatched from.
Claude was loved and adored by tens of thousands of folks from all over the world, and served as a symbol for this premiere science institution in the Bay Area for several decades. That’s a proud legacy for anyone to leave behind. He will be missed but never forgotten.