Lehigh Acres gator trapper wrangles gators two days in a row

LEHIGH ACRES, Fla.– A gator made itself at home at a Lehigh Acres community on Friday.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission got a call after the four-foot gator made its way from under a car to the back porch of a home.

“I was actually just looking out my back porch and I seen him walking across the yard and I was like ‘Oh, that’s a gator,’” said Mackenzie Marinell.

FWC dispatched Tracey Hansen, a gator trapper who has been wrangling for 30-years.

“Got here and he had slipped out of the backyard,” said Hansen. “He was along the bushes. Had to chase him down.”

In only a matter of minutes, the gator was captured.

The four-foot gator did not compare to Hansen’s job the day before.

“This is four foot and the other one was 12 foot four inches.”

“As soon as we walked up he spun towards us and started hissing and growling,” said Hansen.

He got the gator in his snare.

“He started to roll around like they do, they’re little death roll,” said Hasen.

But the gator wasn’t going down without a fight.

“Then finally he grabbed the pipe, like I said, he held that pipe for about 20 minutes in his mouth.”

That wasn’t it. The Cape Coral Police report said an officer had “a brush with danger after being slapped by the tail of a prehistoric predator.”

“One got a good slap across the back by the tail,” said Hansen.

The officer was not seriously hurt.

“It’s a big one,” said Hansen. “We had to call in another policeman. It was too heavy for all of us to pick up.”

It took three officers and two wranglers to end the “tumultuous battle,” as the Cape PD report read.