A cat peering out of its Sarasota home was unimpressed with the alligator it saw on the other side.
A post on Facebook on Oct. 3 from Sarasota resident Ed Wardell showed a massive alligator unsuccessfully attempting to climb the home’s front door, with its underbelly pressed against the glass. The resident’s cat stood on the other side, fixated with the attempt.
The post has been shared more than 98,000 times on Facebook as of today.
It’s not known at this point whether the alligator was captured, and Creative Loafing has reached out to Ed Wardell for updates.
Typically, alligators that are removed from their capture site will try to return there again, so they’re usually relocated to remote areas where they would not encounter people. These areas have pre-existing alligator populations and an established social structure, says the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
It’s not unusual for alligators to try to break into homes. This past February, a seven-footer broke into a garage in North Port, Florida, and in May of last year, an 11-footer smashed through the window of a Clearwater woman’s home.
Alligators are common in all of Florida’s 67 counties, and the state currently has roughly 1.3 million, according to the state FWC.
This story first appeared on our sister paper’s site, Creative Loafing Tampa.
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This article appears in Oct 14-20, 2020.