LAKE WORTH, Texas — A bank customer making a withdrawal from an ATM was startled by a hissing alligator early Wednesday, authorities said.
A woman was withdrawing cash from the ATM at about 4 a.m. CDT at a bank in Lake Worth, northwest of Fort Worth, when she was startled by the 3 1/2-foot reptile, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Officers requested assistance from a local Texas Parks and Wildlife game warden, the Fort Worth Police Department wrote on Facebook and Twitter. The warden arrived and helped subdue the feisty alligator and relocate it to an “appropriate habitat” nearby.
“Crikey! Alligator in custody,” the Lake Worth Police Department wrote on social media.
Nearly 500,000 alligators live in Texas, according to wildlife officials. While gator sightings are not frequent in north Texas as opposed to other parts of the state, they are still native to the area, Dallas-Fort Worth Herpetological Society president Mark Pyle told The Dallas Morning News.
“When everybody sees or hears about an alligator in North Texas, all the alarm bells go off; everybody panics and freaks out,” Pyle said in September 2021. “Little do they know that we’re definitely within the historic range of alligators. There’s nothing abnormal about finding an alligator here in the lakes in North Texas.”
No officers were injured and neither was the alligator, KDFW-TV reported.
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