A minor hurricane blew through the area north of Naples in Southwest Florida. A young single man with a love of nature lived on some acreage in a traditional wood frame house on stilts close to the Estero River. The hurricane winds and tidal surge did not damage his house, but it did leave a small alligator dazed and near dead in the yard, hooked and tangled up in fishing line.
Taking pity, Florida Man removed the hook and line and put the alligator in a large steel tub with some water and bait minnows. Florida Man then went off to work. On his return, he was satisfied to see that the alligator had revived and eaten the minnows.
Over the course of several years, the alligator outgrew the tub and minnows diet and was then put in a fenced enclosure with a pond. The gator thrived on a diet of raw chicken parts every afternoon.
Florida Man realized of course that the gator needed to be back in the wild, so he took it out of the enclosure and put it in the river -- only to have the gator still turn up every afternoon insisting on chicken dinner before he would return to the river.
The ordinary course of such a story would have Florida Man coming to grief because of feeding a wild alligator. This was not to be in that Florida Man died in a traffic accident. And for years afterwards, canoeists on the Estero River had to beware of a large alligator that would bump into canoes expecting a sandwich or other food.