A couple not long moved from Arizona to Louisiana woke early one morning last month to find a 5ft alligator had entered their home through a dog door.
Don and Jan Schultz, the Washington Post said, were woken by growling from their Australian cattle dog, Panda, which they initially ignored. When Panda’s alarm grew louder, and the couple heard a thud, they understood their new home in New Iberia had an unwanted visitor.
Don Schultz, 62, grabbed a Glock pistol from his nightstand and went to confront the threat, leaving his wife and dog in the bedroom.
“I jumped back,” Don Schultz told the Post, of what happened when he saw the crocodilian home intruder.
“Then it puffed up and started hissing.”
The couple had moved to New Iberia, Louisiana, from Yuma, Arizona. There, Panda defended against rattlesnakes on their property. But an alligator was a larger – and toothier – proposition.
“I’m glad the Lord gave us a smart dog,” Jan Schultz told the Post.
Don Schultz added: “Alligators really like to go after dogs … so we’re assuming that it probably was stalking” Panda.
The dog, home-surveillance footage showed, had been venturing out each night at 1am to patrol the property. The couple said they thought the alligator followed the dog’s scent to the house.
Confronting the alligator, Don Schultz called out to his wife. She didn’t believe him, until he took a photo. The local sheriff was also skeptical that an alligator had entered the house. When deputies arrived, the reptile stopped Schultz reaching the front door. Nor could the deputies enter.
After three quarters of an hour, a state wildlife and fisheries alligator trapper lassoed the intruder, which was later released into a nearby bayou.
The couple decided to install a new dog door, triggered by an electronic collar. They also installed a motion-activated camera trained on the back door, they told the Post.
Thanks to the climate crisis, alligators are extending their range. Just as armadillos have recently been found to have spread from the US south to the midwest, the Columbia Missourian recently reported, alligators are following the retreating frost line, extending their range into Arkansas and Tennessee.
In a still warmer future, alligators may move into the backwater draws around the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, the Missouri paper said, a move that would reverse range restrictions in place for 20 million years.
On Tuesday in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, a 9ft 9in alligator killed a 69-year-old woman who was out walking her dogs. The alligator was euthanised, authorities said.
