A wildlife biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) discovered a 13-foot, 700-pound alligator in an irrigation ditch this week.
The alligator was living along Lake Blackshear and was spotted by a local Sumter County resident on Feb. 25, who reported it to authorities.
When its pictures started to appear on social media, it’s massive size led people to think it was a hoax.
Howze measured the animal at 13 feet and 4 inches long with a chest girth of 57 inches. He was not expecting to find anything longer than 10 to 11 feet long when he first arrived at the spot.
Cummings said the alligator was in the ditch for close to a week and this was unusual behavior for an alligator.
“It took a while to get it out of that ditch. It was bigger than we originally anticipated and we had to use heavy equipment to move it,” Howze told Cordele Dispatch.
Once the biologist got it out on the land, they noticed various old gunshot wounds on its body. It was in extremely poor health and had to be euthanized.
First Coast News reports that the largest alligator ever discovered in Georgia was 14-foot long. It was recorded during a hunting season in Lake Walter F. George and harvested in 2015.
Cummings said the heaviest was hunted in 2011 and was 860 pounds and 13 feet, 4 inches long.
They are found in a variety of wetland habitats in these cities: In marshes, swamps, rivers, farm ponds and lakes in the wild. They have also been found in ditches, neighborhoods, drainage canals, roadways, golf course ponds, and sometimes in swimming pools.
The factsheet mentions there have been only nine reported incidents of alligators attacks on humans in Georgia from 1980 till May 2007, including one death in 2007.
“Six of these incidents happened as a result of the human stepping on or otherwise making contact with a submerged alligator. The remaining three incidents were a result of the alligator mistaking the human for prey,” it said.
