Cops: Don't open door, there's a gator

HOLIDAY, Fla. - Police lights and a phone call woke Kevin Jessup at 4 a.m. "Good morning, sir," a deputy told him in the pre-dawn call Wednesday. "I advise you not to step out your front door. There's an alligator right there. A large one."

46-year-old plumber looked out a window to his porch.

"That was a sight to see," he told the St. Petersburg Times. "Like a big lizard."

Jessup went back to bed. One of his neighbors suggested the wandering alligator might be the reason the neighborhood's stray cat population has declined.

A trapper came and hauled reptilian trespasser to a slaughterhouse in Lacoochee.