Uninvited Guest: Florida Woman’s Close Encounter With a Kitchen Alligator

A Florida woman received an unexpected visitor in the form of a nearly 8-foot alligator that climbed into her home and became trapped in her kitchen. Mary Hollenback was watching TV on her couch at 5 p.m. on March 28 when she heard her front door rattle.

“I thought somebody was just trying to get into the wrong house,” she told me. But seconds later, when she opened the door, she discovered a 7-foot, 11-inch alligator in her kitchen. “I went to see what was happening. It turns out there was an alligator there,” Hollenback explained. “He’d move forward a few steps and then stop, then come forward again and stop. Finally, it became trapped between my island and the stove. It could no longer move.”

Hollenback’s immediate instinct was to dial 911. A group of five Sarasota County deputies and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers responded to her call, seizing the alligator and transporting it to their van.

“So cool, so professional – they acted like, ‘Oh, alligator in the house, no problem,'” recalled Hollenback.

While the alligator has vanished, Hollenback’s photographs of the incident will endure forever. They became popular after a neighbor shared them on Facebook. “I had to have a picture of him because nobody would believe it otherwise,” Hollenback went on to say. “Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought that it went, essentially, viral.”

It was a special greeting for Hollenback, who moved to Florida from Indiana three years ago. The alligator left minor scrapes on the bottoms of her cupboards, and she had to discard her rug. But she claims she is learning to coexist with the wildlife in her backyard.

“Makes life in Florida a whole lot more interesting,” she went on to say.

Hollenback claims her screen door is magnetic, and the alligator pushed it hard enough to break the clasp before propping it open and waltzing inside. She believes it came from the pond across the street, but she’s not sure what caused it to enter her home.

According to the FWC, the animal was brought to an alligator farm following its capture.