Dog’s barking alerts owner to a shocking sight outside his front door
Dogs are known for their tendency to bark at just about anything. Whether it’s a passing car, the mailman, or simply a squirrel, many times a dog’s incessant barking can drive their owners a little crazy.
One Florida man is thanking his dog after his barking led to a surprising, and horrifying, discovery outside his home.
Woods got the surprise of his life
The incident started when Freckles, a three-year-old husky-Labrador mix, began to bark during the early morning hours. Annoyed with his dog’s barking, Freckles owner, George Woods, got up to see what the dog was upset over.
Looking outside, at first, Woods did not see anything. After turning on the outside light, though, he got the surprise of his life.
“It really wasn’t a sense of fright,” he told the local news station. “It was more like a shock.”
Woods saw a large alligator three feet from his front door
Sitting outside his home in the dark was a 7-foot, 8-inch-long alligator. The alligator was sitting in a paved area near the front door, hissing at the dog and his barking and thrashing about.
“My first thought was, holy shi-nikies, what are we gonna do now?” Woods told Coral Springs Talk.
Removing the alligator
Woods called the security guards that patrolled the community who did not believe him at first. After coming to his home, the security workers called Gator Boys, a local alligator rescue team. The rescuers worked to remove the large alligator from Woods’ property.
After only six minutes, the team was able to secure the alligator, which they named Daisy. The rescue relocated the alligator to another area, better suited to the large reptile.
Fortunately, for Woods, Freckles was there to warn him. It’s hard to imagine what could have happened if anyone had stumbled into the alligator in the dark.
Woods is calling Freckles a hero
In fact, Freckles’ mom is an airline pilot and had been preparing to leave for work that morning. Woods is hailing the canine as a hero for helping to prevent a potential tragedy from happening.
“Even though we have a canal just a couple of blocks to the east and west of us, I’d never had this happen before, or any of my neighbors either,” Woods said.
What tipped Freckles off that something was amiss? Dogs are known for their heightened senses of smell and hearing. They can hear four times as far as a human and can smell 10,000 to 100,000 times better than a human. Regardless of how Freckles was able to detect the alligator’s presence, he was thankfully there to warn his family to the danger present right outside their front door.
For more on Freckles’ heroic actions, you can watch the video below.
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