Alligator found in student drop-off line at Florida school. Deputy jumps on its back

An alligator with a sense of humor showed up in the student drop-off line at a Florida middle school.

It happened Wednesday, Aug. 24, at Lexington Middle School in Fort Myers, about 125 miles south of Tampa.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office reported the “7-foot alligator greeted students during drop-off.”

No one got hurt. But the school’s resource officer, Dave Jennings, is “a former gator trapper” and he did not hesitate to jump on the gator’s back like it was a wild horse.

Video shared by the sheriff’s office shows Jennings held the alligator’s mouth shut while someone else taped its jaws together — a standard trapper safety move.

Lexington Middle School has just over 1,000 students in grades 6 through 8.

Classes began Aug. 10 and social media commenters noted finding an alligator on campus did little to ease “natural fears of sending our little ones alone to the bus stop.”

Others saw humor in the fact a school resource officer was trained in alligator wrestling.

“Maybe this was a mama gator just dropping her babies off at school,” Niki Blanchard wrote on Facebook.

“Might help them get to class quicker,” Marissa Erin posted.

A second video posted by the sheriff’s office on Facebook shows it took four men to lift the alligator and load it into a box on the back of a truck.

Lee County Sheriff’s Office officials said a professional trapper under contract with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission relocated the alligator.

This story was originally published August 26, 2022 at 4:41 AM with the headline "Alligator found in student drop-off line at Florida school. Deputy jumps on its back."