Texas woman encounters angry 8-foot alligator on her porch

A Texas woman found an unpleasant surprise on Monday after returning from a trip: an angry 8-foot alligator. 

“And all I seen was the mouth wide open and hissing,” said Tammy Tanner. “And he was on me, he was right there. So I tried to turn quickly to start running but his tail caught my knee and it knocked me down. And I thought, ‘well he’s going to be on me now.’”

Her boyfriend, who has close by, saw the encounter and ran to help her. 

“When she got knocked down I couldn’t see what happened. I just know she come flying back out,” said boyfriend, Jody White. “So I come running up here seen that [gator] and I had to drag her back out away from the doorway here, so it was out of the way. Then we just got back in the truck and waited.”

The couple called the Harris County Constable Office to deal with the unwanted guest. They brought along trapper Tim Deramus of City Gator Services.

The trapper lassoed the alligator and taped its jaw, saving the couple from the 8-foot danger. The creature was relocated to its natural habitat. 

“In the middle of a subdivision, you just don’t see an alligator, 8-footer, every day on your front porch,” White said. “Kind of spooky.”

Tammy was taken to the hospital to get examined after falling to the floor when the alligator’s tail hit her. She is expected to recover. 

“I can imagine tomorrow I’m going to be so sore I can’t walk because I hit the cement hard trying to run and get away,” Tanner said. But I’m still here.”

On Monday, Deramus received five calls related to alligators. He caught two. 

“It’s the beginning of the mating season. So the more the males are just running crazy looking for females,” said Deramus. “And all the baby ones are scattering out of the water because the big alligators eat the smaller alligators, they are cannibalistic. And so the little alligators are… popping up on people’s lawns."