JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Florida man came to the rescue when an alligator was found inside a fire station.
Mike Dragich, a licensed alligator trapper, was seen on video running through a Jacksonville Fire and Rescue station trying to find the reptile on Monday. He's seen looking under the fire truck, walking up to the gator barefoot and grabbing its tail. The gator even snapped back at him at one point.
Dragich eventually uses a pole to hold the alligator's head in place while he sits on top of it, using his knees to hold the gator's front legs in place. He then holds the mouth clamped shut with his hands, allowing a firefighter to wrap tape around the animal's snout.
In an Instagram post, the trapper said the gator was in a pond next to the station, and city workers couldn't check a meter due to the gator coming out.
"It made its way into the bay, and it made some fun for the crew and I!" he said.
At the end, two firefighters hold up the large gator with Dragich by their side.
This isn't Dragich's first (gator) rodeo, either. In April, he was caught on video wrestling an 8-foot alligator after it was wandering around on the streets of Jacksonville. Again, he was barefoot.
That time, Dragich didn't have any tools with him because he was at a hockey game with his kids when he got a call about the gator on the loose. He is known to catch gators and posts videos of himself with them to his more than 70,000 followers on his Instagram account called bluecollar_brawler.
"I live for adrenaline, and it's part of the game," he said when he removed a 10-foot gator from an elementary school in May 2023.