A 10-foot, 300-pound alligator turned up in a canal bordering Coconut Creek High School on Friday, just three days before Broward County students head back to class. The reptile was spotted at the canal near Creek Parkway and Lyons Road, right along the edge of the school campus.
According to the WPBF report, first detailed by assignment editor Allen Cone, the Coconut Creek Police Department posted about the sighting and could not resist having some fun with it, joking that the alligator might have been waiting around for the high school to open on Monday. Officers compared the canal to a Buc-ee’s for alligators and suggested the massive reptile could have played left tackle on Creek High’s football team.
Broward County Public Schools has set Monday, August 10, 2026, as the first day of the 2026–2027 school year, meaning the alligator picked its canal-side spot just days before hallways and athletic fields fill with students again. The district enters the new year on the heels of an “A” rating from the Florida Department of Education for a third consecutive year, according to Broward County Public Schools. Coconut Creek High is also among six Broward high schools receiving new artificial turf athletic fields this year, part of a push that brings the district’s completed turf-field total to nine, per the same district materials.
How the Gator Ended Up in the Canal
Coconut Creek High School sits along Coconut Creek Parkway near Lyons Road, an area bounded by drainage canals that connect to a broader regional canal system. Those waterways link Everglades wetlands to residential retention ponds, giving large reptiles like this one a natural travel corridor between rural and suburban Broward County, per Broward County Public Schools facility records. Coconut Creek’s canal and retention pond network runs along numerous schools and residential developments, a reality the Coconut Creek Police Department has addressed before — the department partnered with FWC officials in February 2024 for a public wildlife awareness seminar at the Rowe Activity Center focused on coexisting safely with suburban coyotes and alligators…