KINGSLAND, Ga. — An innocent mistake almost left the Moe family in Kingsland, Georgia, as gator bait.
“I’ll be honest with you, when I first saw it, I thought my eyes were fooling me,” said Lisa Moe.
Moe was working on her driveway all day Wednesday. When she was done for the day, she left the garage door open by mistake.
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“We’d heard a thug earlier,” said Moe. “And we went to see what was going on.”
When Lisa went to open the garage door, never did she expect what she’d see on the other side.
“Turned on the light, and looked to my left, and there’s this gator right in front of my husband’s work bench,” said Moe. “Never in a million years would I have imagined a gator in my garage.”
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Lisa and her husband called 911, which gave them a number to call the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
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When they called Georgia DNR, she said the agent told them they don’t respond to gators that are over 4ft long if they are inside their home for liability reasons.
Action News Jax reached out to the Georgia DNR to verify if that is correct.
David Mixon is the Regional Supervisor for Game Management out of the Georgia DNR’s Brunswick office. He said there was a misunderstanding by the technician on call.
“We respond to any size,” Mixon told Action News Jax. “That issue certainly falls underneath what we would respond to. And any gator’s worth a call.”
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However, the Kingsland Police Department was able to get the job done and wrangle the gator themselves.
“They were grabbing things in the garage that were useful, such as the rake, the dolly, the moving blanket,” said Moe. “It was like they knew what resources they needed to use to be able to wrangle this gator. And they just did it like in such a synchronized fashion.”
From now on, the Moe family will be keeping their garage closed.
For more information on Alligators and who to call to have them removed, click here.
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