The sick-cat room at the Agoura Hills Animal Shelter got an unexpected visitor today — an alligator.

The 2 1/2-foot-long gator was captured late Thursday in Thousand Oaks by a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy.

Authorities did not know where the alligator came from, but they assume someone was keeping it as a pet, Detective Eric Buschow said.

Deputy Jason Fuller thought he was on a wild goose chase when he responded about 11 p.m. to a motorist’s report of an alligator on the loose. But there it was — a gator sitting in the street near Pederson and Erbes roads. Fuller grabbed the scaly creature, taped its mouth shut and tied it up with hobbles usually used to bind humans.

Animal control officials took the alligator away, and on Friday afternoon it was resting in a cage in the back of the animal shelter’s sick-cat room. The gator’s bright green eyes flashed, but it barely seemed to notice the cats in nearby cages or the journalists crammed into the room to capture its image.

Shelter employees said they were forbidden to speak to the media, but visitors were excited.

“I’m totally surprised,” said Loren Hanish, 48, of Calabasas, browsing through the cat room when she heard about the gator.

“I wonder where it came from?” said her daughter, Barrett Hanish, 17.

Thousand Oaks resident Phebe Fox brought son Daniel to the shelter to catch a glimpse of the gator. Daniel, 9, feigned nonchalance when asked about the animal. But when his mother offered him a boost to look through an opening in the door to the sick-cat room, he eagerly climbed up. Meanwhile, Fox snapped a picture with her cell phone.

Buschow has encountered deer, horses, cows, an emu and a bear during his 18 years with the Sheriff’s Department, but this was his first alligator.

The alligator’s stay at the Agoura Hills shelter was scheduled to be brief. Shelter officials planned to turn it over quickly to the state Department of Fish and Game.

When Fish and Game recovers an exotic animal, it usually tries to find out where it came from, then attempts to place the animal in an appropriate place, said department spokesman Steve Martarano.

Alligators can escape from a home, or be illegally set loose by their owners when they get too big. Alligators can grow to more than 8 feet in captivity and live for decades.

It is illegal to keep an alligator as a pet in California, but a number of facilities have permits to house them for purposes including education and use in the entertainment industry, Martarano said. In 2005, Ventura County had the fourth-largest number of exotic animal permits in the state. More than half were held by entertainment businesses.

If the department cannot find a place for an exotic animal, it usually is euthanized, Martarano said.

“It’s just an unfortunate situation all around, because someone was negligent,” and in the end, the animal is often the one that suffers, he said.