See you later: Alligator removed from Washington Channel at The Wharf

As alligators go, it was a small one. So small that people in Florida might not even look twice.

But this one was here in D.C. Specifically, in the waters of the Washington Channel at The Wharf in Southwest.

“I saw him right there suntanning, and they tried to get it, and he splooshed right back into the water,” 23-year-old Phoenix Norwood said.

After the dockmaster sent out an alert Thursday morning warning residents of the marina at The Wharf that what appeared to be a juvenile alligator had been spotted in the water there, Norwood just had to see it.

After more than an hour of looking, he not only found it, but after grabbing a net on a pole from his family’s houseboat, he scooped it out of the Washington Channel.

“I took the net, scooped him up, and then I kind of twisted the net and held it down to the ground until the authorities arrived,” Norwood said.

A photo taken shortly afterward shows him – still in his pajama pants – and what D.C. Animal Control believes is an honest-to-goodness alligator about two-and-a-half feet long, Norwood said.

He said he had to keep a tight grip on the net while waiting for the harbor patrol to arrive.

“He was squirming; he was doing all kinds of stuff,” Norwood said.

D.C. police took a report. The gator was secured and transported by Animal Control officers.

No one knows how the reptile got into the Washington Channel. The working theory: discarded pet.

It is illegal to possess an alligator in D.C., Maryland or Virginia.

Norwood said he’s seen a lot of animals while living on the water, but D.C. gator tops them all, and he wrangled it in true Florida style. 

“Catching an alligator, that’s a rite of passage in Florida, but in the District? Not so much,” he said. “You got your lawyers, your politicians, but alligator wranglers? Not exactly.”

On Friday morning, the alligator was headed to an animal sanctuary in Pennsylvania, Brandywine Valley SPCA told News4. A photo shows the reptile on a blanket with what might be a smile.

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