Moment Florida woman Mary Hollenback discovers huge alligator has burst through screen door of her house and made itself at home in her kitchen
- Mary Hollenback was confronted by an alligator that wandered into her home
- She thought it was someone at the wrong house because that “happened a lot”
- Instead, the reptile trudged into her kitchen until police took it to a farm
A Florida woman heard a rattle at her door and thought it was someone trying to enter the wrong house, and got up to shoo them away.
Instead, Mary Hollenback was confronted by an 8-foot alligator lumbering through her home.
The enormous reptile was so strong that it smashed open the front door in Venice, south of Sarasota, even though the magnetic latch held it in place.
He walked into her kitchen looking for a meal while Hollenback panicked, wondering how she would get the enormous animal out.
Mary Hollenback was confronted by an 8-foot alligator that lurched through her home
The huge reptile was so strong that it pushed open the front door in Venice, south of Sarasota, and staggered inside
The alligator wandered into her kitchen looking for a meal while she wondered how to get it out
‘I’m sitting on my couch. It’s late afternoon. I was just watching TV and I heard my front door rattling, my screen door,β she said WFLA.
βI thought someone who didn’t live here was trying to get in, thinking he was probably in the wrong house because that happens a lot.
“I got off the couch and came out the door prepared to say, ‘You’re in the wrong place.’
‘I’m probably no further, no closer to the front door than you are now. Just close enough to look and see that it wasn’t a person trying to get in; it was an alligator.β
Hollenback said she was shaking too much to call any number other than 911, but her phone was on the kitchen counter just inches from the beast.
Mary Hollenback (pictured) believed the alligator walked across a pond on the other side of the road, somehow unnoticed by neighbors
Two Sarasota County sheriff’s deputies and three Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers held the animal together and clamped its jaws shut
They towed it into a pickup truck and took it to an alligator farm
Very carefully she crept behind the alligator and grabbed her phone.
Two Sarasota County sheriff’s deputies and three Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers arrived to remove the reptile.
They held the animal together and clamped its jaws together, then three of them dragged it into a pickup truck and took it to an alligator farm.
βThat one deputy was really funny because he told me that when he saw the report, he didn’t believe me until he walked into the house and saw the alligator,β Hollenback said.
Hollenback believed the alligator was wandering across a pond on the other side of the road, somehow unnoticed by neighbors.