Man uses dog leash, duct tape to wrangle an escaped alligator in his Missouri backyard
_fitted.png "A Missouri man wrangled an alligator that made itself at home in a creek in his backyard.")
A Missouri man ditched his hedge clippers and lawn mower in favor of duct tape and a dog leash when he spotted an unexpected intruder in his backyard creek.
Chris Suljak was doing yard work on Saturday, and from the start he noticed something was amiss, he told KTVI.
“Usually when I come down here, I hear about 15 to 20 bullfrogs jump in the water; first off it was dead silent,” said Suljak, who lives in Wildwood, about 30 miles west of St. Louis.
Then came a sound that didn’t belong, and a sight that startled him. He screamed, Suljak told the outlet, loud enough that his stepdaughter came outside to see if he was OK.
“I said, ‘no I just saw an alligator, and she started laughing. So needless to say everyone started running down here,” he said.
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His neighborhood is no place for an alligator, he decided, so he grabbed some duct tape, a rod and a dog leash, and fastened a make-shift snare pole, KMOV reported.
“We got a lot of kids in this subdivision. I didn’t want anybody to get hurt,” Suljak told the TV station.
He and another man went down to the creek and got to wrangling the four-and-a-half foot lizard.
It took a few hours, as the gator “kept outsmarting us,” Suljak told KTVI.
Eventually, they got the leash around the alligator’s neck and drug it out of the water, KMOV reported. He wrapped some duct tape around its snout so it couldn’t clamp down on anyone, then pulled out his phone and started dialing numbers.
Suljak says he called animal control, 911, the Missouri Conservation Department, and a few others, and none wanted to come get the alligator, according to KMOV. He called the Bi-State Wildlife Hotline and finally someone was sent to pick up the reptile.
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Suljak shared pictures of the alligator on social media. “Exciting day in our creek,” he wrote.
Within hours of posting, a man claiming to be the gator’s owner reached out to him, and was quickly reunited with his pet, Suljak said.
“Somebody’s gator about a mile from my house got loose two weeks ago. He has him back now.”
It is legal to keep an alligator as a pet, outlets report, though owners are required to inform local authorities of the animal once it reaches 8 feet in length.
This story was originally published July 21, 2021 at 9:13 AM with the headline "Man uses dog leash, duct tape to wrangle an escaped alligator in his Missouri backyard."