The gator awoke the family on the morning of Easter Sunday

Rumor has it that cows have trouble going down the stairs. Unfortunately, it appears alligators have no problem navigating up a flight of steps.

This is a terrifying fact one Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, family discovered when they encountered a 9-foot gator sitting on the second story of their porch, reports WCIV.

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The scary sighting happened on Easter Sunday. Susie Polston awoke at 1:30 in the morning to rustling outside the door in her bedroom leading to the upstairs porch.

“It sounded like aluminum rubbing up against aluminum,” Susie Polston recalled to WCIV.

At first the woman thought the sound could be her daughter moving furniture, but soon realized it was something much more shocking: a 9-foot alligator resting on Susie and Steve Polston’s back porch.

“We thought it was a joke maybe and we knocked on the window and it moved. So we were like, ‘no, this is a serious prank if somebody did this,'” Steve said.

The alligator appeared to have gotten there on its own, climbing up 15 steps and breaking through a door to get to the secluded spot. Worried that the gator might try to bust through the glass door and into the house next, the couple called the authorities.

Help arrived quickly, and the reptile was removed. Unfortunately, after hours of trying to move the alligator safely, the animal was killed and removed because of its aggressive behavior. Officials believe the male gator ended up on the porch after getting confused while trying to navigate a migratory mating route.

The Polstons, who have found snakes, birds and turtles in their home over the past seven years, prefer to never encounter another gator that close to where they sleep again. On Monday, the couple had a gator-proof door to their patio installed, in case another reptile tries to take the stairs.