A woman in Ave Maria, Florida, who thought an intruder was trying to break into her home got a whole different kind of scare when she discovered what was really making the noise on her lanai: two alligators brawling.
While she was inside her house with her sleeping infant, Kayla Burress said she heard a loud noise on her screened-in porch that grew louder and seemed to be moving closer.
When she checked outside to see what all the ruckus was, she saw two big alligators engaged in a ferocious battle. During the melee, the gators crashed into the screened enclosure, shredding and twisting the mesh and metal as they tore through it.
“I thought somebody was breaking in because I never thought that the gators were going to enter my porch,” Burress told WINK News. “It definitely looked like they were fighting over territory or something. It wasn’t like a mating ritual that I had seen, because there was blood and it had it some hind quarters, like in its jaws through the door.”
The alligator fight was caught on camera by the homeowner
Eventually, a licensed trapper arrived to remove one of the alligators from her lanai, but it did not go easily as video she captured of the scene attests.
“It was scary,” Burress said. “And I just warned everybody else in the neighborhood, like, watch your kids. Watch the dogs. Because it was fast and they were powerful.”
According to WINK News, while terrifying, this type of behavior by alligators isn’t unusual this time of year during mating season.
“They’re … going to be on edge because they think their life is at stake,” an expert said. “So they’re going to do everything they can. So when you trap them, corner them, they’re going to show those they’re going to show defensive behaviors and aggressive behaviors.”