Swimmers celebrating Father's Day on the Texas coast, south of Houston, did not expect to be joined by a 7-foot alligator. But, as the Dallas Morning News reports, the gator made his way into uncharted waters and found himself in the surf at Surfside Beach Sunday.
While the visitors went on to successfully capture and deliver the gator to a Texas game warden, who then released the reptile back into the wild, not every recent gator encounter has gone quite as well.
According to the Dallas Morning News, another gator sighting at Sylvan Beach prompted officials to close down the area and involve Texas Parks and Wildlife and lifeguards in a lengthy search that yielded nothing.
A 12-foot alligator weighing in at 400 pounds and captured in Floresville outside of San Antonio last week was put down after officials deemed the animal's size "an issue of public safety," the San Antonio Express News reports.
Officials told the Dallas Morning News that recent flooding has both displaced gators and lured them into unusual waters (i.e., the ocean) because of decreased salinity.
In April 2015, residents of Del Valle, southeast of Austin, made news with reports of an alligator in a retention pond — one that reportedly had been hanging around for a couple of years.
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