And this meant the alligator would probably be killed.

“When a contracted nuisance alligator trapper removes an alligator, it becomes the property of the trapper,” said Tammy Sapp, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), in an email to The Washington Post. “In most cases, the alligator is processed for its hide and meat, which is the primary source of compensation for their services.”

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Vargas knew he could handle the gator, so he drove to the property and his body camera captured the encounter.

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“I’m an animal lover,” Vargas told The Post in a phone interview. “I just saw no need to put it down.”

Vargas has experience handling alligators after volunteering for two-and-a-half years at the Native Village, a now-closed wildlife refuge on a Seminole reservation in Hollywood, Fla.

“You learn how the gator moves and how to move around it,” Vargas said. “You just learn the alligator’s behavior and that’s how you’re able to safely catch them by hand.”

So he grabbed a homemade catch pole — a long stick with a noose at the end made out of telephone cable — and attempted to wrangle the hissing alligator.

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“It wasn’t going to go easy,” Vargas said. “You could tell it hadn’t had previous experience around human beings just from its behavior.”

Vargas was eventually able to tape the alligator’s jaw shut and carry the animal into the back seat of his patrol car. He drove the gator to a nearby canal and released it into the water.

There were seven incidents involving alligators biting humans in Florida last year, including one fatal attack, according to the FWC, which estimates the state’s alligator population at 1.3 million.

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“Officer Vargas doesn’t know it yet, but we’ve just made him the department’s official alligator wrestler (kidding but not really),” the Boynton Beach Police Department, which shared body camera video of the incident, wrote on Facebook. The original video has been viewed more than 19,000 times and other versions of the video have accumulated more than 500,000 total views.

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In June, a trapper killed an alligator in a different South Florida community, upsetting some neighbors who expected the animal to be transported.

Earlier this month, a couple in Lakeland, Fla., were arrested and accused of mutilating a trapped alligator and attempting to sell its tail. While Florida has a statewide alligator harvest program, it requires permits and licenses.