9 Foot Gator Pulled From Palm Beach Garden Family's Pool
PALM BEACH (CBSMiami/CNN) - A Palm Beach Gardens family found an unexpected visitor lounging in their backyard pool Monday morning.
Just after sunrise, PGA National resident Senta Evans scanned her yard as she always does before letting out the family's two dogs. The sight of a massive, nine-foot alligator resting at the bottom of the pool stunned her.
"I was like Mike there's a gator in the pool," she said, with a laugh.
Mike, her husband, assumed he would see a two or three-foot creature, and also was taken aback by what he saw. The Evanses, who had just used the pool the day before, called FWC.
"The trapper came out here with some gear to get a six-foot alligator out," said Mike. "He said that things nine-feet and he went back and got bigger gear. It was kind of nuts."
Read: Helpful Tips To Keep In Mind During Gator Mating Season
Working alone, the trapper hooked the gator and raised it up from the shallow end of the pool, while the family, watching in amazement, captured it all on video. Mike and Senta said it took about twenty minutes for the trapper to remove the gator. A neighbor helped to lift it into the back of a pickup.
The couple said the trapper told them the gator may have come in under the chain link fence that surrounds their back yard, but he couldn't say for sure.
The Evanses say the trapper told them the gator would be relocated to a more appropriate location.
In the twelve years the Evans family has lived at PGA National they've seen alligators in the vicinity, but never on their own property. They said they'll continue to enjoy their backyard and the pool, but they'll be looking out for any unwanted visitors from now on.
(©2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company, via WPBF contributed to this report.)