That’s not a blown tire in the middle of the road
A gigantic 12-foot-long alligator got ran over by a semi-truck earlier this month around midnight on I-10.
It was near the Monroe Street exit in Tallahassee, Florida when it was struck and caused a temporary closure of the exit, according to the Florida Highway Patrol and Tallahassee Police Department.
The 463-pound gator had its snout hit by the semi, but that mostly just managed to make it really mad.
Road gators are something we’ve all come to expect on the interstate but this is ridiculous!
Law enforcement arrived at the scene find the angry gator walking in circles, apparently stunned from the hit.
Vaughan’s Gators was contacted to capture the injured reptile.
One big ticked-off gator
“I’ve been the trapper here in Leon County since April 2010 and that was the third biggest gator I’ve ever captured,” owner Broderick Vaughan said.
“He wasn’t happy we were trying to remove him,” continued Vaughan.
So it doesn’t sound like having some time to collect itself helped the ran over gator calm down.
Vaughan was eventually able to snare the gator and tape its injured snout shut so he could load it on his truck.
This is already the third gator Vaughan has had to relocate from the roadway this year.
There’s always an uptick in alligator nuisance issues in the warmer months since mating season starts up.
“The season is starting early because there were about three weeks in February where we had temperatures in the 80s,” said Kathy Russell, the general curator at the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo. “But this is not uncommon in Florida.”
Seriously injured
Even though Vaughan did everything he could to safely relocate the ran over gator, it ended up having to be euthanized.
He said it “had crushed its skull pretty good,” according to the Bradenton Herald. “He had worked his way to the edge of the guardrail by the time I got there and I couldn’t see him right away because the Florida Highway Patrol vehicles were blocking it. I came around and that’s when I saw how big he was.”
