6-Foot Alligator Makes a House Call at Town Center’s Brookhaven Apartments

A 6-foot alligator made a house call at a Brookhaven Court residence Sunday evening. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission personnel and Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies captured and released the alligator in a 65-minute operation. There were no injuries. For all the gator’s Amazonian demeanor, the Brookhaven Court residents had not ordered one.

The incident was reported to the 911 dispatch center at 9:52 p.m. by a resident at the Reserve at Brookhaven apartment complex in Palm Coast’s Town Center. The call was referred to Fish and Wildlife, but the wildlife police said it would not respond to the call without law enforcement’s eyes on the gator, according to 911 notes.




At almost 10 p.m., the gator made its way to unit 124 at Brookhaven, where a sheriff’s deputy’s video showed it grazing the side of the door frame with its head, then as if disappointedly crawling away. The gator may have glanced the amulet in the shape of a crab hanging from the door. (As an astute commenter noted, an earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the amulet as a scorpion.)

Fish and Wildlife personnel captured the gator, which did not appear to have had a prior record, and released it “at a lake off Town Center Boulevard” just before 11 p.m., according to the 911 notes. It isn’t clear if the gator had made additional house calls by then: no body cam video, other than the nine-second clip provided by the Sheriff’s Office, was made available.

Alligators and crocodiles pre-date human habitation in Florida. Humans and alligators have had to learn to coexist as development has encroached on the reptiles’ natural habitats. The last time an alligator made headlines in the city dates back to 2016, when a smaller one decided to cross Cypress Edge Parkway, stopping traffic. The alligator in that case was careful to use the white-tripped crosswalk.

Serious injuries caused by alligators are rare, FWC reports, but the state wildlife agency maintains a toll-free Nuisance Alligator Hotline: 866-392-4286. “Remember,” the agency cautions, “never feed an alligator and keep your distance if you see one.”