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(Photo: Rasa Love)<\/p>\n\t\t(Photo: Rasa Love)<\/p>\n
LELAND, NC (WWAY) \u2014 A Leland woman got an unexpected visitor in the middle of the night when an 8-foot alligator showed up on her front porch and appeared to knock on her door.<\/p>\n
Rasa Love said it was a quiet night at her home on Spring Glen Court in the Waterford community until shortly after 1 a.m., when she heard a loud noise outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe heard this loud thud and wasn\u2019t sure exactly where it came from. My dog started barking so I went to the front door. And I slept on the light switch and I opened the door and I looked down and there was a very large alligator with his head resting on the doormat. And then I quickly slammed the door,\u201d Love said.<\/p>\n
Love, a real estate agent, captured images of the massive reptile resting on her doorstep.<\/p>\n
Leland police were called to the home after the unexpected encounter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess he got tired of everyone shining flashlights on him, and he made his way back through the front bushes and down the side yard. And at that point he was sort of there,\u201d Love said.<\/p>\n
While finding an alligator at her front door was a surprise, Love said seeing the reptiles around the neighborhood is not unusual.<\/p>\n
She believes alligators inhabit many of the retention ponds throughout Waterford.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have seen them on people\u2019s, you know, backyards. That go up to the canals. It\u2019s not it\u2019s not an unusual thing. I mean, we do live among them and they live among us,\u201d Love said.<\/p>\n
John Henry Harrelson with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission said alligators are more mobile than many people realize, particularly after dark.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think people realize just how much alligators move. Most of the time, that movement is at night. When we\u2019re not out,\u201d Harrelson said.<\/p>\n
Love said the experience was a reminder that alligators don\u2019t spend all their time in the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are nocturnal they. They live around quite a bit on land, not just in the water, so. I think that\u2019s, uh, interesting. He found my house,\u201d Love said.<\/p>\n
Despite the startling encounter, Love said she hopes the experience raises awareness about living alongside wildlife rather than creating fear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, that\u2019s one of the beautiful things about living here is that we do get to see some pretty amazing wildlife. And I don\u2019t want to vilify this at all. I do want to bring people\u2019s attention to that they do live here and they can be dangerous, but it\u2019s also not a reason to kill them or do harm to them,\u201d Love said.<\/p>\n
According to the Town of Leland, the Leland Police Department worked with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to relocate the alligator to an undisclosed waterway.\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tTags: 8-foot alligator<\/a>, Alligator<\/a>, Alligator Encounter<\/a>, Animal Relocation<\/a>, Brunswick County<\/a>, Cape Fear<\/a>, Leland<\/a>, Leland Police Department<\/a>, North Carolina Wildlife<\/a>, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission<\/a>, Rasa Love<\/a>, Spring Glen Court<\/a>, Waterford<\/a>, Wildlife<\/a>, WWAY<\/a>\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Photo: Rasa Love) LELAND, NC (WWAY) \u2014 A Leland woman got an unexpected visitor in the middle of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[370301,6619,370302,370303,48130,210408,122961,370304,338283,38346,370305,79,370306,241933,201,370307],"class_list":["post-881772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-8-foot-alligator","tag-alligator","tag-alligator-encounter","tag-animal-relocation","tag-brunswick-county","tag-cape-fear","tag-leland","tag-leland-police-department","tag-north-carolina-wildlife","tag-north-carolina-wildlife-resources-commission","tag-rasa-love","tag-science","tag-spring-glen-court","tag-waterford","tag-wildlife","tag-wway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}