A man living on a golf course in Lakeland, Florida noticed some bubbles in his pool and went out to investigate, assuming it was a rogue golf ball that’d broken through his screen and landed him the swimming pool. What Craig Lear found when stepping out onto the porch and peering into his pool was something a fuckton larger than a golf ball, a 9-foot-long alligator, which by all measures is VERY large for gators.
Since this is Florida, the modern equivalent of the ‘wild west’, instead of calling Animal Control and waiting for them to remove the deadly animal this good ol’ boy busted out some rope, lassoed the pissed off dinosaur, and pulled the gator out of his pool, inch by inch. Thankfully for us his wife, Laura Lear, was on hand to film the 100% WTF incident and share it with the world.
So how in the hell does a 300-pound, 9-foot-long alligator wind up in a swimming pool that’s surrounded by a screened-in cage? WFLA’s News Channel 8 reports:
Craig Lear tells News Channel 8 he came home from work around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday and went to let the cats out in their screened-in pool area. He didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary since the family pool has a dark bottom to it; the perfect place for the gator to just blend in.
Lear became suspicious when he saw bubbles floating up to the surface. That’s when he realized there was an alligator at the bottom.
“This is something I see on the news,” Laura said. “Not in my backyard. I saw him and I was like that’s no gator, that’s a big gator.”
“It startled me at first but I knew it wasn’t going to attack me,” Craig said.
The couple believes the alligator came from the lake that’s behind their house and busted right through the screen.
So I guess it’s safe to go ahead and classify this as 100% ‘WTFlorida‘, right?
They also make mention that alligators in Florida begin their mating season at the end of this month, so everyone in the Sunshine State (myself included) should be in high alert for huge ass alligators invading places and spaces that they’re not normally found.
[WFLA]