Gator with mouth bound shut found outside Michigan home. ‘Well, I’ll be. DISPATCH!’
A creature often seen in swamps and rivers was discovered in an unlikely place — outside a Michigan woman’s home.
A woman in Romulus, a Detroit suburb, called police when she spotted the alligator on her back patio, officers said in an Aug. 23 news release.
The skeptical sergeant speaking to the woman made sure she was safe, then asked for a picture of the animal. The woman sent over the photo to confirm the unusual sighting.
The photo shows the alligator with its mouth bound shut lying beside a grill on the patio.
“Well, I’ll be,” the sergeant responded, police said. “DISPATCH!”
The alligator was rescued and taken to the Animal Magic sanctuary, WDIV reported. It’s unclear who the reptile belonged to.
“This guy did not come out of the wild,” Mark Rosenthal, the owner of the sanctuary, told WDIV. “This, I’m going to guess, (came from) a pet shop or was smuggled back from Florida. We’ll never know. He can’t talk, so we’ll never know the story behind him.”
Police are calling it the “Romulus Alligator Event of 2023.”
“A common saying in police work is that officers have a front row seat to the greatest show on earth,” police said of the incident. “When you start your workday, you never know what’s going to happen. Because of this, police work is interesting, and officers get some pretty good stories.”
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