MIAMI—Officials say they were forced to euthanize an 11-foot (3.3 meters) alligator that broke through a chain-link fence into the backyard of a Miami home.
The Miami Herald reports firefighters, police and officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission tried to capture the 600-pound (272 kilograms) reptile at first.
But the gator wanted to go its own way. He would get up and start walking every so often and then lie down again. Fire rescue alerted the residents of the neighborhood.
A trapper was able to secure the gator with some rope, but he couldn’t get a good hold on the slippery gator because it was wet from the rain. He decided to euthanize the reptile.
Police Remove 750-Pound Alligator From Florida Park
This is not the first incident where an alligator wandered into a public area. Officers at the Jupiter Police Department removed a 750-pound alligator from a local park in Jupiter, Florida, on March 28.
Responding to an alligator call the officers removed the 12 feet long reptile from the Commerce Park area. The department shared their adventure in a Facebook post.
“He was carefully removed without harm from the area and relocated to a safe place,” police said in the post.
This morning officers responded to an alligator call in the Jupiter Commerce Park area. This gator was almost 12 feet…
Posted by The Jupiter Police Department on Thursday, March 28, 2019
Another 12-foot, a 500-pound alligator was caught in Parrish, Florida, lurking in the water in December last year.
The gator was captured on Dec. 19, as it was “menacing” divers who were working on a private project on the waterway, according to WKMG-TV.
Divers discovered the massive gator underwater and immediately got out to request help, according to Jim Cutway, a licensed alligator trapper who helped in the capture of the alligator.
“The divers had less than 5 feet of visibility, and they knew he was there,” he told WKMG-TV. “The gator was very close [to] them. He was bothering them.”
Half an hour later, a trapper from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission came to help Cutway capture the beast.
“The divers said, ‘We’re out of here until something is done with him,’” Cutway said.
To coax the gator from the water, Cutway said he and the other trapper used calls until the gator “popped” his head out of the water.
Upon seeing the huge alligator Cutway’s first reaction was “Wow!”
It took more than two hours for them to wrangle the gator out of the water and onto the shore. While they weren’t in any immediate danger, the gator did give them a “long-fought tug of war,” Cutway said, adding, “That one was very girthy, big bull gator.”
Eventually, the large gator was taken to an alligator farm on the state’s east coast, the WKMG-TV reported.
As soon as the gator was gone, the divers returned to their underwater project, according to Cutway.
Epoch Times reporter Venus Upadhayaya and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
