Watch: 11-foot gator pulled from Florida pool
An 11-foot alligator was pulled from a pool in Sarasota County Friday night.
The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office documented the encounter on its official Twitter page during a “Tweet from the Beat.” That’s when deputies post live updates while they’re on patrol, allowing Twitter users to follow along.
Just before midnight, deputies tweeted a picture of the gator in a swimming pool in the Calusa Lakes neighborhood.
Patricia Carver said the monster alligator busted through her screened-in porch to take a late-night swim.
Carver’s husband woke up when he heard the commotion.
“He opened the curtain and saw the head of a gator and said, ‘Call 911, call 911!’” Carver said. “I felt a little apprehensive, but we could see he really wasn’t moving.”
Sarasota County deputies called an animal trapper who got the alligator out of the pool. “The deputies were wonderful. The trapper did his job, too, by making sure the public was safe,” Carver said.
Carver said she believes low water levels in local lagoons may have played a role in the alligator taking a dip in her pool.
The sheriff’s office later posted a video of a trapper pulling the reptile from the swimming pool with the hashtags #NeverADullMoment and #OnlyInFlorida.
Carver said the gator managed to damage the porch door as it was being removed.