Emergency medical service crews responded to a home in Ohio for a medical call, but while they were inside, they went to the basement and found a 5-foot alligator named Alli, WSOC reported.
Dusty Rhoades said he got her at a reptile flea market when she was about a foot long -- 25 years ago!
Police called in reinforcements from the Department of Agriculture, and they were able to wrestle the alligator into a crate.
"The way the property owner described it, he said 'She won't hurt you.' Those were his words. I wasn't going to test that theory," Cmdr. Darrell Breneman, of the Madison Township police, told WSOC. "Something new every day in law enforcement."
Police said in Ohio it is illegal to have an exotic animal like an alligator without a permit. Rhoades did not have a permit, the television station reported.
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