‘Guess he wanted to go to school too!’ Deputies catch alligator prowling around campus
It’s not unusual to hear about an alligator sighting in Florida.
But this one went to school and got a little too close for comfort — to kids.
According to a Facebook post from the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to a call Monday about a gator caught in a trap at Palm Valley Academy in Ponte Vedra Beach.
The six-foot reptile had been seen wandering around a pond on the campus last week, when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission laid out the trap.
“The Palm Valley Academy school mascot is a bobcat, not a gator ... so when they noticed this big guy hanging out in the pond nearby they called for help! Deputies and some trappers came by to help this 6-foot gator find a new home safely!” the sheriff’s office later joked. Pictures show the gator restrained in the back of a truck with a smiling officer.
“Guess he wanted to go to school too!” a commenter joked about the academy, a school teaching kindergarten through 12th grade.
Another posted: “Does he get one phone call? Innocent until proven guilty? Have fun with it.”
But others weren’t amused and voiced concern that that alligator might have been harvested for its skin and meat.
“I hope it was really relocated to a new home,” wrote a concerned citizen with the handle @StacyGannon. “It would be a good lesson for the kids to know it was not killed needlessly just for harvest. Lesson of humanity.”
The sheriff’s office responded: “That was the information we had at the time of the post. The SJSO does not make the determination regarding the alligators status, that is done via state law through the Wildlife Commission regarding this particular species and by its size.”
