(WSVN) - In the week since Hurricane Ian swept across Florida, the Burns family has done their best to enjoy the newly flooded lake behind their house, but it hasn’t been easy, not when the threat of snakes and alligators have escalated with the rising water, forcing once distant and dangerous animals, to be much closer to their Central Florida home.
“Chompy is our alligator. He’s been here since we moved in,” Lindsey Burns said. “Due to the recent flooding, we have seen him again since.”
Until the water begins to recede, families remain cautious.
“If they see Chompy, just to paddle back in, but we really only see him when the sun’s setting,” Burns said.
It’s becoming an issue across the state.
A Lake County animal shelter shared a picture of a lost dog, and they are hoping to find its owner.
They said it was attacked by an alligator in the wake of the storm, which prompted the team to safely amputate its tail.
The relocated wildlife has also been an issue for Carlton Ross, also known as the “Gator King.”
“With the water levels rising like that, it’s pushing all the wildlife into the dry areas, which there’s not a lot of at the moment,” Ross said.
He usually leads people on guided alligator hunts, but he can’t do his job if those gators are in people’s backyards rather than in lakes.
“There’s just so much water right now. Even the nuisance trappers are having trouble getting to the areas and locations where those calls are being made,” Ross said.
For the past 24 years, those trappers have caught about 8,000 gators a year on average, which are usually a little under 7 feet.
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