What would Mobile do if they came face to face with an alligator? We asked
MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — Gulf Coast natives might be used to seeing alligators in swampy areas and at the north end of Mobile Bay, but one alligator took a business trip today to downtown Mobile. The public offered mixed reactions on what they would do, had they been face-to-face with the gator.
“I’d jump on top of it and wrestle that baby down,” Danny Thomas said.
WKRG News 5 doesn’t recommend wrestling an alligator, especially one that Alabama Wildlife Services confirmed was 11 feet long and 300 pounds.
Gator stops traffic in downtown Mobile
Don’t be too shocked at Thomas’s response. He wasn’t the only Mobilian who said he’d take matters into his own hands.
“There’s a gator? I’m gonna beat up the gator. I’m gonna jump on it,” Doug Deluca said. “What else am I supposed to do?”
John Woodham said he probably would wrestle an alligator the size of the one found on Water Street early Thursday morning.
“If you get a little bit smaller and you get down to like six feet or something, I think I’d probably try to hop on top of it,” Woodham said. “Man, okay, but you’ve gotta think, though. Half of the alligator, half of it is its tail, right? It isn’t gonna do nothing with that tail.”
Unfortunately for Woodham, this gator didn’t like being poked by the Alabama Wildlife Services, let alone wrestled.
The gator wiggled through a hole in a fence on Water Street and was found near the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Passenger Terminal. (The fence that the gator came through has since been fixed.)
The Mobile Police Department redirected traffic around the alligator while Alabama Wildlife Solutions led the gator back into the hole in the fence it originally went through.
“I’m not fighting an alligator,” David Koch said.
Sulynn Creswell said she would run away from the alligator. She also said she’s not surprised to hear of an alligator downtown.
“Alligators are everywhere these days,” Cresswell said.
Angie Lee quickly pointed out her escape plan had she encountered the gator.
“I always heard that they run a straight line and they run it very quickly in a short distance,” Lee said.
“So, if you zig-zag, they try to follow you and they can’t do it very fast.”
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