Horse Wins Battle with Gator by Decision

An Odessa horse suffered injuries to its leg during a Thursday encounter with a 6-foot alligator.

A 911 call about the encounter was received by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office around 8:30 p.m. When deputies arrived at the 19400 Gunn Highway property, they located a 6-foot alligator in the pasture and found the horse with a bite on one of its legs, an email to media from the agency stated.

Deputies called in officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to wrangle the alligator. A trapper was ultimately called in to capture the critter, an occurrence that is fairly commonplace in Florida, FWC spokesman Gary Morse said.

“We regularly remove alligators that wander into pasture areas where there’s a potential for conflict with livestock,” Morse told Patch.

He said the battle between the two creatures appears to have involved a defensive situation. While the horse was bitten by the gator, the wounds are not believed to be serious, he added.

The alligator in question was put down and not relocated because of its size.

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“Alligators over 4 feet are almost never relocated for a number of sound biological and public safety reasons,” Morse said. “Contrary to public perception, the relocation of wildlife is generally a bad idea on many levels and in the end – it rarely benefits the animal.”

Relocating a larger animal back into the wild in another area, he explained, can create disease transference issues and social integration problems in the animal kingdom.

“In wild animals where nuisance behavior is learned as a result of contact with human elements, then relocating that animal is only relocating the problem.”

Alligator encounters become commonplace in Florida as the temperatures heat up. State officials receive so many reports about nuisance gators, in fact, they’ve set up a hotline number to accept calls. That number is 1-866-FWC-GATOR (866-392-4286). In 2013 alone, the state fielded 15,036 nuisance alligator calls, which resulted in the removal of 6,605 creatures.

Photo courtesy of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

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