Quick Take
- A six-foot alligator climbed 16 steps to reach a second-story porch, and the way it came back down is something you have to see. See the full story →
- A neighbor had lived on this island for over a decade and never once encountered an alligator, but that all changed one October morning. Read the neighbor's account →
- Alligators are freshwater animals, which raises the question of what one was doing at a coastal beach house in the first place. Explore alligator habitat →
- South Carolina has far more alligators than most people realize, which makes one key question worth asking: why don't incidents like this happen more often? See South Carolina's population →
Seeing an alligator in the South is not exactly headline material. Spotting one beside a pond, crossing a road, or basking near the water is one thing. Finding a six-foot alligator hanging out on the second-floor porch of a beach house is something else entirely. That’s exactly what happened at Folly Beach, South Carolina, in the video above.
Alligator Sighting in South Carolina
American alligators can live for more than 60 years.
©Benjamin Klinger/Shutterstock.com
Guests at a home in Folly Beach, South Carolina, got quite a surprise on October 27, 2023, when they discovered a roughly six-foot alligator on a second-story porch. The gator had climbed 16 steps to get there.
Neighbor Greg Bayer said he had owned a home at Folly Beach for 11 years and had never seen an alligator on the island. That changed when guests staying next door pointed out their unexpected visitor. Bayer later summed up the climb pretty simply: “He climbed 16 steps to get there.”
At the start of the video, the alligator is perched at the top of the stairs with nowhere obvious left to go. Bayer attempts to guide it back toward the staircase with a long pole. Eventually, the gator turns around and starts heading down, looking surprisingly comfortable for an animal negotiating a flight of household steps.
The descent is not particularly graceful. Video shows the alligator partly walking and partly sliding down the stairs as people watch from a safe distance. It eventually makes it to the bottom, exits through a gate, and heads toward a nearby dock before returning to the marsh.
How Many Alligators Live in South Carolina?
American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) are ectothermic animals, meaning they depend largely on their surroundings to regulate body temperature. They commonly bask in the sun to warm themselves and retreat to water or shade when they need to cool down.
American alligators are primarily freshwater animals and typically inhabit swamps, rivers, lakes, ponds, and slow-moving streams. They can also tolerate salt water for limited periods and sometimes move through brackish coastal marshes. That makes an alligator near Folly Beach entirely possible, even if finding one upstairs is considerably less routine.
The species has made a remarkable recovery after populations plunged during the 20th century. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that nearly five million American alligators now live across the southeastern United States, including about 1.25 million in Florida. South Carolina alone is home to an estimated 100,000 alligators, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
South Carolina’s alligators are concentrated mainly in the Coastal Plain, where wetlands, rivers, ponds, and marshes provide plenty of suitable habitat. Exactly why this particular gator decided to climb 16 stairs is impossible to know. Whatever it was looking for, it apparently decided the second floor was not worth the trouble and headed straight back toward the marsh.
