Massive 3-Legged Alligator Rescued from Suburban Texas Street
The animal was discovered wandering a quiet neighborhood in Missouri City, Texas, early Sunday morning
A 1,200-Lb., three-legged alligator, measuring over 11 feet long, was found wandering a suburban Houston street over the weekend.
According to ABC 13, a man who lives in Missouri City spotted the slow-moving gator while driving home early Sunday morning.
"I saw his eyes. I didn't see him, I saw his eyes," Cornealous Greigg Jr., a resident of the Quail Valley Thunderbird community, told the news station. "So, it made me do a U-turn, and then when I did the U-turn, I drove slow, and then I saw him."
He added, "He was ginormous. He was huge. I've never seen one that big up close."
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Greigg, who estimates he's seen about seven gators in 10 years while living in the area, said he knew what to do.
"One, I didn't get out of my car," he said. "Two, I called the police."
Once officers arrived, they watched over the animal while they waited for a trapper, the station reported.
Related:'Big Boy' Alligator Removed from Texas Neighborhood with Tow Truck After 'Morning Stroll'
That's when Timothy DeRamus, also known as Houston's "gator wrangler," was dispatched to capture and move the reptile, according to the Houston Chronicle — but it was not an easy task.
"He kept throwing the rope off, throwing the towel off, snapping his jaws at me, swinging his tail at me. An alligator this age could have knocked my leg off real easy," DeRamus told Metro Video Services.
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After eventually taping the gator's mouth shut, the wrangler ran into another challenge — moving the massive reptile.
DeRamus called a wrecker to haul the gator to Gator Country rescue park in Beaumont, about 100 miles away.
The trapper, who has seen his share of feisty gators in the Houston region's ample waterways, had a theory about how this giant reptile lost his leg.
"Maybe he was threatened by another alligator and decided he wanted to get out of the water and get away from that alligator so he wouldn't lose another limb," DeRamus said.
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