MOUNT DORA, Fla. – A U.S. Army veteran used his combat training — and time well spent watching “Animal Planet” — to fight off a gator outside his Central Florida home Tuesday.
As seen in a video going viral online, Eugene Bozzi of Mount Dora made the most of a bulky recycling bin to scoop up the hissing alligator as neighbors cheered him on.
He then rolled the gator away from the neighborhood, releasing it into a nearby lake.
“It was spur of the moment thinking,” Bozzi, 26, told the New York Post. “I went over there and it was bigger than me. There were other peoples’ kids out there, also. Military instinct kicked in — and, you know, ‘protect at all costs.’”
He went on to tell the newspaper that he got the creative idea to trap the gator because watches a lot of “Animal Planet.”
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office confirmed it received a call about an alligator in that neighborhood Tuesday night but that once deputies arrived, the gator was gone.