What do you do when you open your front door and find a 6-foot-long wild alligator on the front step?
If you live in Boynton Beach, Florida, you call Officer Alfredo Vargas—and get ready to enjoy the show.
Vargas answered a call in the Hunter’s Run subdivision on July 10. When he arrived at the address he found himself facing 6 feet of hissing, irritated reptile.
Luckily for all, Vargas had taken a gator-handling course at Native Village wildlife sanctuary in Hollywood, Florida, some 13 years before, and remembered his lessons.
The officer didn’t start out by tackling the gator. First he called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They told him that it would take half an hour to get a trapper out there—and that in all likelihood the trapper would kill the nuisance gator.
They also said that if Vargas could handle the beast, the officer was free to release the gator anywhere he thought would be safe for gator and residents alike.
Vargas decided that saving the gator was worth the risk. it took him several attempts but he was finally able to lasso the writhing, whipping animal and wrestle it to the ground.
“I just tried to cover its eyes. I tried to calm the alligator down,“ Vargas said.
Covering an alligator’s eyes usually calms the animal. But this gator was so agitated it took multiple attempts before, finally, the by-now exhausted reptile decided to give up.
Officer Vargas taped the creature’s mouth, took it to a canal away from civilization, and set it free.
Neither the officer nor the alligator were in any way injured in the incident.
The Boynton Beach police were proud of their champion gator-wrestler. They posted the video from Vargas’s body camera on their website.
Vargas approved. “I thought it was pretty cool, it looked exciting,” was his comment.
