{"id":224401,"date":"2026-04-09T04:29:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T04:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/224401\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T04:29:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T04:29:36","slug":"florida-alligator-caught-on-camera-enjoying-early-morning-swim-tampa-trapper-removes-scaly-suspect-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/224401\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida alligator caught on camera enjoying early morning swim, Tampa trapper removes scaly suspect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Brief<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Bodycam footage captured the moment Tampa police officers arrived at a local home and discovered a gator lounging near the pool.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The alligator was safely removed, allowing the homeowners to return to a &#8220;gator-free&#8221; night of sleep.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">TAMPA, Fla. &#8211; A surprise guest took pool hopping to a very <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13news.com\/tag\/us\/fl\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Florida;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Florida&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Florida<\/a> level last month. An <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13news.com\/tag\/pets-animals\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:alligator;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;alligator&quot;}\" class=\"link \">alligator<\/a> broke into a local residence for an early morning solo swim.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The backstory<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox13news.com\/tag\/us\/fl\/hillsborough\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Tampa;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Tampa&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Tampa<\/a> Police Department responded to what homeowners initially believed was a human intruder around 3:30 a.m. on March 29. But, instead of a human burglar, they discovered a large reptile casually lounging in the pool area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">What they&#8217;re saying<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;What was thought to be a human intruder\u2026turned out to be a Florida-style uninvited guest,&#8221; the police department said. &#8220;With assistance from a nuisance alligator trapper, the scaly suspect was safely removed, leaving the residents to finally enjoy some well-deserved, gator-free sleep.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2b6379659d42de3fbc1ce994eb98082d.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Bodycam footage captured the moment officers arrived, and the trapper successfully wrangled the gator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Source<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Information for this story was collected from the Tampa Police Department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief Bodycam footage captured the moment Tampa police officers arrived at a local home and discovered a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136,9822,3793,101449],"class_list":["post-224401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-tampa-police","tag-tampa-police-department","tag-the-alligator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}