A Florida Deputy Caught a Gator With His Bare Hands, Then Drove It to a Lake in His Back Seat
He caught it by hand, taped its mouth shut and drove it to the lake.
CELEBRATION, Fla., Nov. 3, 2026 — Somebody called the Osceola County Sheriff's Office on Halloween afternoon to report an alligator walking around a parking lot. Deputy Nicholas Pippin showed up without a catch pole or a trapper. He used his hands.
The call came in around 3 p.m. Saturday from the lot outside Celebration Hardware Company, near the eastern entrance to Celebration, the Osceola News Gazette reported. By the time Pippin got there, the gator was trying to crawl under a fence. His body camera shows him slowly pulling it back out, taping its mouth shut with duct tape and carrying it to his car while bystanders took pictures, WESH reported.
Pippin told the people watching it was about 4 feet long and around 40 pounds. It rode in the back seat.
He drove it to nearby Lake Cecile and let it go in the water. The sheriff's office posted an edited version of the bodycam video afterward.
No charges were filed against the alligator.
Written by Odd News Staff from the reports above. All reporting credit belongs to those outlets.
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