It’s not every day that your neighbors knock on your door to kindly let you know that you currently have an alligator underneath your car…

…and thank god for that!

In reality this particular pond monster was only about five feet long once the trapper pulled him out and got him measured, but he certainly looked a lot bigger from the safe distance where we were standing as we all watched him lurking suspiciously underneath the family SUV! Apparently he’d started on the sidewalk across the street and then taken refuge in my driveway once the neighbors started gawking … luckily from there he opted to stay put and just wait it out until the guy showed up to haul him away.

I certainly learned a lot more about alligators than I expected to today before my wife woke me up to explain what all of the commotion was about! Like the fact that alligators under four feet long aren’t considered “a nuisance” and aren’t typically even removed unless they pose a threat to humans, and that once they’re big enough like ours to be removed, they’re pretty much always put down simply because they’d likely just pick fights with other gators and eventually get themselves eaten if introduced into a new pond where there’s already more dominant males…

Oh yeah, and also that even though this is very much the first alligator I’ve ever seen here in our subdivision, I guess our neighbors have seen them floating in the ponds nearby or sunning themselves all of the time … and here I didn’t even know there were that many ponds nearby!!!

Needless to say, I think all of us will be checking underneath our vehicles just in case a bit more in the future to make sure that we don’t have any more uninvited guests looking to nibble a little ankle or clean its teeth on a family pet here in the heartland of suburbia… 😉

P.S. Good reading for anyone living here in Florida:
http://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/managed/alligator/nuisance/

Looks like it’s time to put the gator hotline in my cell phone! 😯