Well, it’s that time of year again: the alligators are cruising for sex. As they tend to do in April, males with thick hides and lonely hearts are leaving their usual haunts to seek female company. And on April 28 in Tampa, Florida, one particular guy apparently decided to engage in that most desperate action of all: catcalling at passing cars. Buddy, I promise you, there are better ways.
As you can see in his bodycam video, courtesy 10 Tampa Bay News, a Florida man (who just so happens to be a sheriff’s deputy, but still technically a Florida man, right?) has to work out how exactly to get his scaly friend past the traffic, in a sort of real-life game of Frogger. Otherwise, things might get pretty nasty. Perhaps it’s just that unspoken bond of bros, but as he politely asked the gator to get to the sidewalk, by golly, that’s exactly what the gator did.
Of course, a sheriff’s deputy is used to dealing with shady characters, not scaly characters. Or as the department’s social media feed put it, “When your ‘suspect’ is 7 feet long and comes with 80 very sharp teeth… You call in backup.” A licensed trapper then came by, and together the deputy and trapper got the poor gator ready for relocation. Hopefully, some nice, sweet gator gals are there, too.
Making baby gators
…