Posted on 04/17/2017 12:14:04 PM PDT by Gamecock
Note: This is in SC
Full Title: Alligator climbs to a second story Mount Pleasant porch, through a screen door and then refuses to leave
Susie Polston had fallen asleep watching Friends on television. She woke in the late night to a loud intruder on the porch outside her coastal South Carolina home.
“Somebody’s trying to break into the house,” she told her family. They secluded themselves in the master bedroom and called 911. But then the racket quit. Ben Polston, 16, her son, snuck a look and started yelling, “Oh my God, I found it! I found it!”
He’d found it all right. In the early hours of Easter a nearly 10-feet-long alligator had clambered up the back stairwell to the second story porch of their coastal South Carolina home, crunched through the aluminum screen door and made itself at home between the sofa and the swinging bench. It lay there like a plastic prank, but when they rapped on the window glass, it lifted its head
“It was just surreal. It was so bizarre,” Susie Polston said.
And the monstrous critter wouldn't budge, even though a nuisance removal agent spent two hours trying to coax its 9-feet-7-inch long girth out far enough from the porch at the Mount Pleasant home to snare it safely.
“A 5 footer, we could have put a dog stick on it and dragged it out,” said agent Ronnie Russell, of Gator Getter Consultants. “One that large, he likes to grab onto things (to fight.)” As Russell worked outside, the family inside dragged over household furniture to barricade the door.
“There was not a whole lot of room up there (on the porch),” Russell said.
Alligators wandering up to homes isn’t all that unusual in the reptilian Lowcountry, with its swelter of surrounding marsh. Climbing a story-high staircase is. But it’s spring, the time of year male gators roam for mates.
The prehistoric-age creatures like to take the direct route from waterhole to waterhole and will thrash their way through obstacles if they can. In February, a gator wandered up to a home off Cypress Gardens Road near the Cooper River and appeared to climb the door to ring the bell as it tried to get past.
Unlike the crocodiles seen on television, alligators are not aggressive by nature. But they eat dogs and will react if they feel threatened, including a bluff “false charge” showing their teeth. They can move swifter than their bulk suggests.
The guiding rule for the critters is to let them be. If there’s room and time they will move on, eventually. But the S.C. Department of Natural Resources issues nuisance removal licenses for problem situations, keeps a calling list of licensed agents and has an emergency number, 1-800-922-5431.
The Polstons’ home sits along a golf course pond off the Wando River, separated from both by fencing. In seven years they had not seen an alligator get past the fencing. But “that’s what alligators do, they follow that fencing until they can around it or through,” Russell said.
After two hours of getting nowhere, Russell consulted with the Polstons. State law requires a nuisance-trapped alligator to be killed. Agents usually remove it from the premises first. The family didn’t want to see it killed. But the other choice was to wait it out, maybe for days. The animal was euthanized.
Susie Polston is still uneasy about it all. The family has a more secure porch door now, and will get a gate for the stairwell landing. But they're not turning tail, at least so long as it doesn’t happen again, she said.
“We love it here. It’s beautiful,” she said. “We think this was rare. We hope it was rare.”
a nuisance removal agent gave him some Gator Aid
Thanks, I’m here all week
lol seriously- the people in the house woulda just looked at each other and exclaimed “Look hun- Dinner just walked in the door”
LOL, good one!
i don’t get it?
And a gator-steak or two... or three. Yummy swamp-food.
Consultant #1: Well, Bobby Lee, what do you think?
Consultant #2: I think it's a gator Jimmy Ray.
The third floor is another story.
still don’t get it- reference to a movie or soemthing?
I bought a bottle of gator pecker hot sauce once....
I’ve seen him before on the ponds on Daniel Island. Man those dinosaurs are scary up close.
“Am I late for brunch?”.
The gator was on the second story porch, the third would have been another story. Either you’re playing with me or you will wake up during the night and get it.
That is a great photo! I’d take my chances with the cars, please!
doh i jusdt got it- egads- lol - i usually get jokes liek that- must be tired today lol
People pay good money for gator nuggets. Breaded gator tail chopped up into cubes and deep fried. Tastes like snake. Not surprising since they are both in the reptile family.
Only other birds taste like chicken.
LOL! No, seriously, I did. Thanks :-)
No need to put holes in twenty floors below. .22WMR works fine. CCI sells .22WMR with a Swamp People logo on the box.
Even says choot em! on the box with embossed raised alligator texture.
“...That thing would discovered my love for .308.......”
At close range, I think you could probably use something a lot less powerful and likely to over penetrate.
Not much that would stop a bullet that enters an eye or ear socket from reaching the brain. Of course if you missed the alligator might get pretty upset.
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