Feisty Alligator Knocks Trapper Out Cold, Whacks Others: Video

OCOEE, FL — No one in the alligator trapping business expects an easy time of it when called to corral a gator on the loose, and that certainly wasn’t the case in Ocoee, Florida, where a feisty 8-footer head-butted one trapper and knocked him out cold, then whacked others with its powerful tail.

The alligator, which had made its way curiously far inland, was already tied up and the trapper and two police officers tried to load it in the back of a pickup truck and take it away from a neighborhood in Ocoee, located on the outskirts of Orlando. The gator launched a counter offensive and tossed the Florida Fish and Wildlife Department ranger to the ground. He’s expected to be OK, according to media reports.

Jack Redding was one of the residents of the Hammocks subdivision who came out of their houses to watch the officers wrangle the reptile.

“It was pretty crazy,” Redding told television station WOFL television station. “I didn’t know what to do.”

So he did what you’d probably do in the digital age: He recorded the whole thing on his cellphone and posted it on social media, where people can’t get enough of the epic takedown. That’s good news for Redding. “I like getting a lot of views,” he told the TV station.

It was something to see.

As Walter Day told it to television station WKMG, the determined alligator “flipped back and head-butted the guy [and] knocked him to the ground.”

The police officers tried to control the alligator in the back of the pickup, but it was bent on freedom. It “whacked one of the police officers with its tail,” hitting one of them in the head, Day said.

What finally happened was either good or bad news for the alligator, depending on how you want to look at it. It was taken to a lake and released. The gator had trekked a long way on land, far away from the swamps and marshes where the species typically lives, and experts say there are only two reasons an alligator would do that: It was either on the hunt for a mate or looking for food. It's unclear if it found either.

“We don’t really have any bodies of water here in the neighborhood, so to see it come from some distance, it was pretty surprising,” Jim Jarrells, who lives in the subdivision, told WKMG. He said the alligator was of “pretty good size” and “pretty fat.”

Subdivision residents came out of their houses to watch the alligator’s slow crawl. “It walked for 20 steps and then it just kind of sat down,” Day told the station, and then “walked for 20 steps and sat down.”

“It was kind of odd to watch,” he said.

It lay at the front door of another resident, who almost stepped out.

“We were like, ‘No, go back in!’ She closed the door,” Day told WKMG.

When wildlife officers arrived, everyone figured the show was over. But that’s when the action really started. Watch the video below.

Photo via Shutterstock