Quick Take
- A Florida police department's social media response to this gator sighting turned a routine call into something genuinely funny, and the joke lands harder than you'd expect. See the police response →
- This wasn't even the only gator to crash a Florida school that summer, and the second one picked a far more specific, stranger spot on campus. Read about the second gator →
Florida is chock-full of alligators. They are found in swamps, wetlands, sewers, and even suburban developments. It is hard to avoid alligators when you’re in the Sunshine State. What is even rarer, however, is the idea of an alligator wearing a student’s cap and heading to school. Yet, something almost as surprising happened recently in the city of Coconut Creek.
An alligator was found just outside of the city’s high school, only two days before school started for the year. This led to the capture of a notably large alligator and inspired a clever social media post from the Coconut Creek Police Department. Let’s learn more about this quirky story, the size of the gator, and why it may have been ready to go to school.
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Gator on the Lawn, Officers Respond
Officers wrangled a 300-pound, 10-foot-long alligator near Coconut Creek High School.
©Facebook/CoconutCreekPD – Original
On Saturday night, August 8th, police officers in Coconut Creek, Florida, responded to a call about a gator near the city’s high school. They found the alligator in the canal at the corner of Creek Parkway and Lyons Road, directly across from Coconut Creek High School. To announce the occasion, the police department took to social media.
In a Facebook post, the police department suggested that the gator simply couldn’t wait until school opened on Monday morning. They also joked that the canal near the school might serve as a rest stop or gathering spot for alligators.
Humor aside, the police department located the gator and called in help from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Together, they wrangled the gator, which measured 10 feet long and weighed more than 300 pounds.
Relocation and Other Incidents
Alligators entering human developments represents a common problem in Florida, but the Wildlife Commission had a solution. They transported the would-be student gator to the Everglades Holiday Park. This park, situated on 29 acres of wetlands in the Everglades near Fort Lauderdale, is approximately 30 miles from Coconut Creek.
Remarkably, this was not the only recent incident involving an alligator at a Florida school. According to a Facebook post from the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office on July 31st, the office received a report from the Tohopekaliga High School resource officer regarding a gator on campus. Officers arrived to find an alligator hanging out in the school’s baseball bullpen while the football team had practice nearby.
Like the incident in Coconut Creek, officers captured the gator and relocated it to a more suitable habitat.
