Florida Sends New Residents an Eight-Foot Welcome Basket

An eight-foot-three-inch alligator weighing between 300 and 350 pounds was waiting in Allan and Sandy Hofmann’s driveway, parked neatly beside their golf cart and truck as if it had come with the property.

The couple had moved from Pennsylvania to Manatee County, Florida, in March. Just months into their new life in the town of Palmetto, they received the sort of welcome basket that has teeth and cannot reasonably be brought indoors.

“I don’t think we’ve ever thought we’d really see one,” Sandy said. “But when it was here, I was kind of mesmerized a little bit. I mean I was amazed, like, oh my gosh, we have an alligator.”

Longtime Floridians may regard an alligator sighting as merely something else happening before lunch. For the Hofmanns, who had never seen one before, the visitor was rather more arresting.

“It was big, very big, very large,” Sandy said, exhausting the available synonyms while remaining admirably composed.

“They measured it at eight foot, three inches,” Allan said. “And it weighed between 300 and 350 lbs.”

The animal appeared in the driveway one morning last week and made itself comfortable. It did not take the hint and leave of its own accord, perhaps because the golf cart suggested a household accustomed to short journeys.

“It was our first one we’ve ever seen, and I’d like it to be our last,” Sandy said. “We can see them in the pond from a distance, that’s kind of nice, but not in our driveway.”

Unsure of the correct etiquette for removing several hundred pounds of reptile from the carport, Allan called the police. Officers arranged for alligator trappers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to attend.

“I’ve never seen gator trappers in my life,” Allan said.

The trappers dragged the alligator away from the carport and onto a neighbour’s grass. They then washed it down with cold water, which Allan believed slowed the animal and certainly improved its general presentation.

“They came in and dragged it off the carport over into the neighbor’s grass,” he said. “Then, they took cold water, washed it down, I think it kind of slowed the alligator down a little bit. It cleaned it up a lot and then they put it in the back of the truck and took it to an alligator club med.”

With the driveway reclaimed and the enormous guest removed by truck, the Hofmanns concluded that they had now completed the necessary initiation.

“Welcome to Florida!” they said. “You know, because now we’ve had an alligator experience. We can have other kind of experiences now that we’re here in Florida.”

Sandy’s preference is clear: future alligators may remain pleasantly distant in the pond, leaving the driveway to the vehicles originally intended for it.