An Alligator Went for a Swim in a Florida Family’s Pool

An 11-foot-long alligator went for a night-time swim in a family’s pool in Sarasota County, Fla.

The Sarasota County Sheriff’s office responded to a late night call Friday from a family in Nokomis, Fla. who needed help getting the animal safely out of their pool.

“The 11-foot intruder didn’t gracefully make his way through an open door,” the Sarasota Sheriff’s office tweeted. “He decided instead, to bust right through the screen.”

A professional trapper was able to safely remove the reptile from the pool and release it. No one, including the alligator, was hurt during the trapping process. The sheriff’s office had a sense of humor about the alligator situation, tweeting out the caption “Just no” with the hashtags #onlyinflorida and #neveradullmoment, along with video footage of the gator being captured.

The alligator video has been viewed over 78,000 times on Facebook already and more than 4,000 times on Twitter. The sheriff’s office also posted photos on Facebook of the alligator as he was heading back into the wild from his quick trip to the suburbs.

There are over 5 million alligators in the Southeastern U.S. and around 1.25 million alligators in Florida alone, according to Defenders of Wildlife.

A 10 year-old girl successfully fended off an alligator attack in Florida last year by sticking her fingers up the animal’s nostrils. She said she learned the survival tactic at an alligator theme park. Doing so prevented the animal from breathing, so it was forced to open its mouth for oxygen and released her from its bite in the process.

More than 16,000 complaints about alligators on the loose were received by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in 2016. The alligator who went swimming in the pool Friday was large in comparison to most trouble-making alligators in Florida —according to the most recent data, the average size of alligators causing a nuisance in 2016 was 6 feet, 7 inches long.