10-foot predator lurking under yard gets stuck in storm drain in Florida, photos show

A large snout seen sticking out of a narrow storm drain led to the realization that an alligator had gotten hopelessly stuck in a Florida home’s yard.

To be more accurate, it was under the yard.

The discovery was made early Saturday, Jan. 18, in Cape Coral, about a 130-mile drive southeast from Tampa.

Photos shared by the Cape Coral Fire Department show the alligator had been using the storm drains like a subway when it decided to get off along NW 27th Street.

In the front yard of a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home.

“A passerby noticed an alligator stuck in a storm drain,” the fire department wrote in a Jan. 18 Facebook post. “The alligator ... turned out to be 10 (feet), 6 (inches)!”

Christa Cole was the passerby, and it happened as she was walking one of her dogs around 7:30 a.m.

“I thought what I heard was the neighbor taking his trash can back up to his house from the night before,” Cole told McClatchy Media.

“And then I heard it again when I turned out of my driveway and walked past the culvert. His jaws were sticking out opening and closing. I didn’t even know what to do. We’re around gators all the time fishing but something was different.”

Her 10-year-old dog, an “extra large” bully breed, “remained remarkably calm and still during the encounter,” she said.

Firefighters and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission came up with a rescue plan that used a truck to lift the concrete lid off the culvert.

Once that happened, the alligator was pulled out by a professional trapper and taken “to a gator farm to live out his life and possibly be part of a breeding program,” the fire department said.

The neighborhood is perfect turf for alligators, given it sits near the Yucca Pens Unit of the Fred C. Babcock/Cecil M. Webb Wildlife Management Area.

Among the dozens of commenters on social media were some who saw it as proof alligators are in sewers.

“I tell people all the time that they travel underground,” Becky L. Brooks wrote.

This story was originally published January 20, 2025 at 8:20 AM with the headline "10-foot predator lurking under yard gets stuck in storm drain in Florida, photos show."