Dog ‘barking ferociously’ at 2 a.m. leads family to alligator in pool, Florida cops say

A Florida couple is crediting their dog with alerting them to a large alligator paddling around in their backyard swimming pool.

It happened at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, May 21, in the Venetian Bay golfing community and New Smyrna Beach police arrived minutes later to see the gator still enjoying itself in the formerly clean water. New Smyrna Beach is about a 55-mile drive northeast from Orlando.

“Our great dog starts barking ferociously. I roll over and ask my wife to check it out,” Martin Brenner posted on Facebook.

“Back to a comfy slumber until I hear Donna screaming about a huge alligator swimming in our pool? I drag my big butt out of bed and sure enough he went through the screen door. Backstroke, butterfly, freestyle, doing it all!”

The alligator was just over 10 feet and weighed 400 pounds, Brenner says, and video shows its length nearly equaled the width of the pool.

It is not known when the gator entered the water, but it was 5 a.m. by the time a state licensed “nuisance” alligator trapper was able to remove it. The fate of the alligator was not revealed, but it is common for large alligators to be humanely euthanized by trappers for the meat and hide.

The pool is enclosed within a lanai, so the alligator didn’t find its way into the pool by accident.

Brenner suspects it pushed open a screen door and walked past his bedroom window to reach the water, WOFL reported. He called the family dog, Riley, a “hero,” for alerting them to the unseen threat, the station reported.

Alligator mating season is May and June in Florida, when males are known to roam in search of females, state officials say.

This story was originally published May 22, 2024 at 10:59 AM with the headline "Dog ‘barking ferociously’ at 2 a.m. leads family to alligator in pool, Florida cops say."