A homeowner in Venice, Florida, got the shock of her life when a scaly intruder broke into her house.
Mary Hollenback was relaxing at home when she heard a rattling noise at her screen door, WESH reported Tuesday. When she went to investigate what was making the noise, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
An alligator had pushed open the screen door, sauntered into the hallway, and stopped in the kitchen. Hollenback quickly called 911 for help with the creature.
“I tried to sound coherent, basically told him I have an alligator in my house. He was doing the paperwork and getting the paper. He said, ‘How long is the alligator?’ I said, ‘Eight feet,'” the woman recalled.
Images show the alligator in the hallway and making itself at home between kitchen cabinets and an island:
Gator in the kitchen! Mary Hollenback in Venice told me that the alligator pushed open her front screen door, which was only latched by a magnet, then walked right into her house. 😬 🐊
Posted by Peter Busch on Saturday, April 6, 2024
In response to her plea for help, several Sarasota County deputies and officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission came to rescue her from the squatter who gave Hollenback such a fright, NBC 2 News reported Monday.
Video footage shows the officers carrying the alligator down the street and securing it in the back of a pickup truck.
Social media users shared their thoughts on the intruder, one person writing, “What was Mary cooking in there, we might need an invitation to dinner if it was that good.”
“Could be worse, could be a roach!” another user commented, while someone else said, “Ok…I would have to move!!!”
When speaking of the officers who removed the creature, Hollenback said, “So cool, so professional. They acted like, ‘Oh, alligator in the house? No problem.'”
In March 2023, a homeowner in Volusia County, Florida, found an alligator enjoying a swim in her pool, Breitbart News reported.
Similarly, no one can forget the 2021 video footage of a man in Florida trapping an alligator inside a garbage can after it was spotted outside a home:
At the end of the video, the man releases the gator near a body of water.
