MISSOURI CITY, Texas — Alligators are not rare in southeastern Texas. But a three-legged, 11-foot reptile turned residents’ heads in a Houston suburb on Sunday.
The large reptile was spotted walking on the road early Sunday in Missouri City, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The motorist who saw the gator called 911, but the wildlife official called to the scene realized he needed backup to wrangle it due to its weight, according to the newspaper.
An alarming but not exactly surprising sight for people living in Texas. One neighbor adds another gator to his list of spottings after a relatively calm reptile goes for a midnight stroll. https://t.co/EL9G5FCTz9
— ABC13 Houston (@abc13houston) May 21, 2023
“I saw his eyes. I didn’t see him, I saw his eyes. So, it made me do a U-turn, and then when I did the U-turn, I drove slow, and then I saw him,” Cornealous Greigg Jr. told KTRK-TV. “He was ginormous. He was huge. I’ve never seen one that big up close.”
Timothy DeRamus, who handles nuisance alligator control for the state of Texas, responded to the area at about 1:30 a.m. CDT, the Chronicle reported. He told KTRK that the alligator weighed about 1,200 pounds and was about 85 years old.
The reptile was on a lawn and was in no mood to leave.
“He kept throwing the rope off, throwing the towel off, snapping his jaws at me, swinging his tail at me,” DeRamus said, according to the Chronicle. “An alligator this age could have knocked my leg off real easy.”
DeRamus told KTRK that the alligator would be taken to Gator Country Rescue Park. A wrecker truck moved the reptile out of the neighborhood.
As for the reptile’s missing leg, DeRamus said another, larger alligator in the area likely was the culprit.
“Maybe he was threatened by another alligator and decided he wanted to get out of the water and get away from that alligator so he wouldn’t lose another limb,” DeRamus told the Chronicle.
Griegg told KTRK he has seen seven alligators in his neighborhood over the past decade.
The last one before the three-legged giant was a 5-footer that Griegg discovered in his pool, the television station reported.
“I’m not an animal guy, so I just let the experts handle it,” Griegg told KTRK.
