A six-foot-long alligator had to be removed from a Blythewood, South Carolina neighborhood after hanging out under one resident's truck for a few hours.
Bill Sipowicz thought his neighbor was playing a joke on him Thursday morning when he pulled up to his house and saw see Bill Cannon standing in his front yard.
Cannon was staring at what was under Sipowicz's Toyota pickup parked in the driveway.
As Sipowicz got out of his car, Cannon said, there's a gator underneath your truck.
Sipowicz, thinking his friend was joking, thought Cannon had put a stuffed alligator underneath his truck, until I pushed the creature with an eight-foot pole, Sipowicz said.
The gator moved and Sipowicz knew he had much more than a joke on his hands.
Earlier that morning Cannon got a call from another neighbor about the reptile.
He said he dropped everything and headed to Sipowicz's house to check it out.
As he pulled up he saw the gator staring at him from under his neighbor's truck.
Cannon immediately called the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, but the closest DNR officers available were out on a boat on Lake Murray and would take a while to get there.
As Sipowicz and Cannon waited for the authorities to arrive, a small crowd had gathered to take pictures and video of the intruder.
The gator held its ground under the truck.
To the delight of the crowd, DNR officers Charles Ruth and Jay Butfiloski pulled up ready for action.
Using just a couple of catch poles and some electrical tape, the officers had the alligator out from underneath the truck and under control in just minutes.
This time a year, it tends to happen a fair amount. It's breeding season for alligators. You get a lot of movement across land when, at other times of the year, you don't get so much of it, Butfiloski said.
DNR experts say the gator that was caught Thursday may have been searching for a mate or may have been forced out of the lake by other, larger male alligators.
The DNR duo did not know immediately what would happen to the gator.
We've got a lot of alligators and not a lot of places people want them, said Butfiloski.
As the uninvited guest was being driven away, Sipowicz was just glad it was all over.
This is only one incident and we've been here 12 years. No big deal, he said.
According to DNR, More than 100,000 alligators live from the Midlands to the coast of South Carolina.
