MICHAEL BRAUN

MBRAUN@NEWS-PRESS.COM

One of the more usual jobs by the county's department of transportation got a little unusual Monday when workers found an 11-foot dead gator in a storm drain.

Betsy Clayton, public information officer for Lee County, said a call from the Lee County Sheriff's Office on Monday alerted the department of transportation to a bad odor coming from a catch basin in the Whiskey Creek community.

She said the DOT crew got there, confirmed the odor and went about figuring out what was the cause.

What they found was a very dead 11-foot-long alligator stuck in the catch basin.

"About twice a year we get calls for gators," she said. Mostly, though, Clayton said the gators are not that large.

"Our pipes are not that big," she said.

The pipe the gator probably came through was about 14-by-24 inches, she said, but where it was found was in the catch basin, which measures about 4-feet-wide. The gator was located about 2 to 3 feet below ground in the catch basin.

After getting the photo the DOT crew removed the decaying gator with an excavator and it was disposed of at a designated dump site.

"This was an abnormally large gator," said Randy Cerchie, director of the county's DOT. "It's just part of what we do."

"There are always gators in our canals and the Whiskey Creek lake, but with all the fresh rain water this one must've made a wrong turn into a drainage pipe," said Whiskey Creek resident Tracey Galloway.

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