Alligators in Kansas? This 4-foot gator chased one deputy away, video shows

Natalie Cowan slows down when she sees animals in the road.

That’s why she slowed down for a raccoon crossing the road while she was driving home from a friend’s house in Basehor, Kansas, on Monday night, she told the Wichita Eagle.

But this raccoon wasn’t alone on the gravel road.

“I continued to go forward and I see two more eyes,” Cowan said, according to WDAF. “So I was like, ‘It’s probably a family of raccoons.’”

Then she got closer — “and I see a crocodile! Or an alligator! I see an alligator,” she said, according to the TV station.

A 4-foot long alligator, to be exact, the station reported.

“So I stop because I was so shocked that there was an alligator in Kansas,” Cowan told The Eagle in a Facebook message.

At first, Cowan thought the gator was a joke, so she said she “instantly started laughing!”

But it was no joke.

Cowan called her friend, and her friend’s dad then called the Leavenworth County Sheriff’s Office.

But once a deputy arrived, “we actually had no idea what to do about it,” Cowan said. That was at about midnight, Major James W. Sherley told The Eagle in a phone interview.

Deputies then conducted a “neighborhood canvas” for just one reason — “to see if anyone was missing an alligator,” Sherley said. The deputies did find the pet alligator’s owners, and they came out to help capture and bring the exotic pet back home.

With no alligator-wrangling experience, Cowan decided she would take a video of what happened next.

In the video, which Cowan provided to The Eagle, two people are seen trying to capture the gator with a catch pole while a deputy is nearby.

Then someone got too close.

The gator quickly turned toward the responding deputy and gave him a scare, video shows, and the deputy threw his hand into the air.

The deputy then quickly ran across the street, while the gator stayed put.

“After it hissed and ran forward, (the gator) eventually wandered off home safely!” Cowan said. “Once the alligator started to get upset it was sort of scary, but at the end of it all it was extremely funny to witness,” she said.

Sherley told The Eagle he is now working with the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism to find this gator a new home. Pet alligators are not legal in Leavenworth County under a county resolution regarding exotic animals, he said.

“They’re going to have to get the gator removed from the home and placed into a zoo or some other care facility,” he said. “Obviously, we don’t have a lot of alligators in Leavenworth County, so this is new ground.”

Sherley said he isn’t sure if the owners will face any charges, as the incident is still under investigation.

“Our concern now is to make sure the animal is safe and the neighborhood is safe,” he said.

This story was originally published October 9, 2018 at 3:17 PM with the headline "Alligators in Kansas? This 4-foot gator chased one deputy away, video shows."