FORT MYERS, Fla. (WSVN) — A Florida couple got a not-so-warm welcome when they walked into their home to find an alligator.
According to Paul anf Mary Jo Quinn, the reptile even used the front door.
Paul said he was in disbelief when a six-and-a-half-foot-long alligator broke into the front door screen of his Fort Myers home.
“It’s a Sunday morning, and I got an alligator in my house?” he said.
The animal, hissing and causing a ruckus, made a beeline for the dining room.
“I got up from the chair, and I could see the door; there was something wrong with the screen. I’m like, ‘What happened?'” Paul said. “As I’m coming around here, I hear like an air noise, like a hissss.”
Mary Jo said she was driving home when she received the text from her neighbor.
“A picture of an alligator nested in the corner of my dining room,” she said. “So that made me panic. I called my husband, and my husband answered the phone. ‘I can’t talk right now. I sent you a bunch of pictures.'”
Paul’s first phone call was to 911. After nearly an hour of babysitting the beast, help finally arrived.
“[The trapper] got hold of the alligator by the neck, wrapped it around there a couple of times,” he said.
“That alligator was fighting him, and his — if you could call it — a tail, his body just swiped my baseboards. Swiped my baseboards,” Mary Jo said.
A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation trapper managed to corner and capture the alligator, but not before leaving a lasting impression on Paul’s furniture.
“He bit this chair, and he had it in his mouth, and he was swinging it around,” Paul said. “We’re going to keep all those bite marks on that chair. It’s going to go back here, and then it’ll be a conversation piece.”
According to the FWC, the gator was taken safely upstate.
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