Plastic Bag Under Texas Couple's Truck Ends Up Being An Itty Bitty Gator

When Hailey Brannen of Axtell, Texas, walked out of her house on Tuesday, she spotted a plastic bag under her pickup truck.

Looks can be deceiving because when she moved the truck, the plastic bag was actually a small alligator.

“I told my husband it looked like a gator. He said, ‘there are no gators in Texas.’ We looked closer and, yep, it was a gator," Brannen told KWTX.

The juvenile alligator was only three feet long so Brannen's husband called a cousin to help wrangle the little guy. Despite some hissing from the gator, the men plopped the it into an empty trash can until a game warden stopped by to collect the reptile.

Alligators are native to Texas, but they hang out in the lakes and bayous near the Gulf Coast and the eastern part of the state. How the small gator ended up in Axtell, which is 15 miles from Waco, is an another story.

Game Warden Michael Serbanic told KWTV that someone called the sheriff on Monday because someone had the small gator with them at a bar.

“Apparently, they took the alligator to a bar. Then someone took it for a ride on a motorcycle. They gave it to someone else who put it in a kennel at their home and it got out! It walked down the road and across the street and ended up underneath the truck,” Serbanic said.

He suspects that someone was keeping the alligator as a pet before it found its way to Brannen's driveway.

The alligator is now at the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco and zoo keepers are trying to find it a permanent home.