Woman greeted by 8-foot gator at her front door

HUMBLE, Texas (KHOU) - A couple got quite a scare when they returned from a trip and an 8-foot alligator was there to greet them on their front porch.

“I thought I heard something, but I looked out of the side of my eye, and all I could see was his mouth, and it was open,” Tami Tanner said. “And he was hissing.”

Tami Tanner said she couldn’t believe what she found at her front door.

“So, I sort of just stopped for a second, like ‘No, this isn’t real; no, this isn’t real.’ And I was going to turn and run, and when I did, he popped me on my left knee with his tail,” Tanner said.

The alligator’s tail knocked Tanner to her knees as her boyfriend, Jody White, came to help her.

“When she first hollered, I thought somebody was behind the brick wall there. So I come running up, and it was an alligator, and he made a loud roar,” Tanner said. “And I picked her up and drug her out here and then we got her up to the truck.”

White called the police, a game warden and an ambulance for Tanner, who was injured from the fall.

Her left eye was swollen and bruised, and her lower lip was busted.

The couple said they were surprised to see the large gator in their neighborhood.

“In the middle of a subdivision, you just don’t see an alligator every day. An 8-footer on your front porch, it’s kind of spooky,” White said.

It took nearly an hour for officers to wrangle the animal, and although he was tied up and his jaw was strapped, shut the gator wouldn’t go easily.

The experience is one Tanner won’t soon forget. She said it was the last time she goes in first through the front door.

“They don’t want to be that way unless they’re hungry, but there’s nothing around here to eat, so I bet he was hungry,” she said.

Tanner was checked out at the hospital and is expected to be OK.

Meanwhile, Texas Parks and Wildlife deputies plan to relocate the gator to a more suitable habitat.