An e-mail that has been zipping around the Internet about a huge alligator in Weiss Lake is a hoax, but a pretty good one.

“This alligator was found between Centre and Leesburg, Alabama near a house! Game wardens were forced to shoot the alligator — guess he wouldn’t cooperate,” the e-mail states.

Weiss Lake residents “could hear the bellowing in the night. Their neighbors had been telling them that they had seen a mammoth alligator in the waterway that runs behind their house, but they dismissed the stories as exaggerations,” the fake e-mail says.

Don’t believe it, say wildlife officials in Cherokee County, who have received numerous calls about the e-mail, which includes photos of the alligator with a full-size deer in its jaws as it swims in a lake.

Capt. Fred Bain of Alabama Wildlife and Fresh Water Fisheries said his office has talked with people concerned about fishing and swimming in Weiss Lake after seeing the e-mail.

Wildlife officers occasionally receive reports of alligators in the lake, but he said the winters are too cold here for them to get very big.

People sometimes bring baby alligators back from trips to Florida or Louisiana and turn them loose in the lake.

“Colder winters affect their growth … If they survive, they hibernate,” he said.

Bain pointed out the Spanish moss in the trees in one of the e-mail photos, which indicates the picture was taken farther south.

The e-mail also says the alligator was 23 feet long, but judging by the size of the backhoe, it was probably 13 feet to 14 feet long, Bain said.

The wildlife officer in the alligator photo is not an Alabama wildlife officer, Bain said, because Alabama wildlife officers' uniforms are different.

The Herald also has received several calls about the e-mail from people who have vacation homes on Weiss Lake.

"Is it real?" asked a man from Carrollton, Ga., who fishes and boats on Weiss Lake during the summer months.

The alligator appears to be real, but it wasn't in Weiss Lake