Professional wildlife trappers managed to wrangle an 11-foot alligator as it ferociously snapped at them in the early hours of Thursday in Florida.
They were notified after a concerned resident encountered the alligator near the Homestead Sports Complex in Homestead who then contacted the local police. They in turn reached out to Pesky Critters Wildlife Control.
In a video posted online by the company, owner Todd Hardwick together with his trappers can be seen engaged in a battle with the angry alligator.
The reptile can be seen snapping its jaws and lunging at the trappers, and even performing a death roll - a spinning maneuver typically used to tear apart prey.
In footage shot from several angles, the gator can be seen with its lethal jaws wide open.
The trappers attempt to get a noose around its them in order to shut its mouth tight but the gator keeps its jaws apart even while hissing at the men.
Eventually they manage to get a rope around the gator before it quickly rolls towards them on the grass and then on the road.
At one point, the gator remains still before suddenly lunging without any notice - almost like an angry dog.
'Keep tight so he can't lunge at me so badly', Hardwick says to his co-workers.
Finally, they manage to tape the gator's mouth shut before police officers help to lift the enormous creature into the back of the catcher's pickup truck.
The gator was finally trapped at around 3:30am on Thursday morning.
Although being injured or killed by alligators is extremely rare in Florida alligators are defined as being a nuisance when they are more than 4 feet long and a threat to people, pets or property.
According to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report on the Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program, or SNAP, the state has 113 contracted nuisance alligator trappers that respond to 10,000 calls for their services annually.
Once captured the alligators become the trapper's property to either sell for their hide or meat, or to sell live to be raised on a zoo or farm.
Healthy alligator populations exist in all of Florida's 67 counties but so-called 'nuisance alligators' are not relocated to the wild, because their reintroduction can lead to territorial fights and deaths between other gators, according to the FWC.
Healthy alligator populations exist in all of Florida's 67 counties.