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Bump In Pinellas Night Came From 8-Foot Gator In Kitchen

Pinellas County Sheriff's Office

Sandie Frosti lives near Oldsmar. Monday night she heard something strange in her kitchen. A trapper eventually resolved her noise problem.

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By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 22, 2008

Updated: 04/22/2008 04:23 pm

OLDSMAR - Sandie Frosti thought she was hallucinating at first.
She saw something big, dark and green on the linoleum floor of her duplex's small kitchen Monday night. She looked away. Then she looked again.

"Oh my God," was her first thought. "How did that get in?"

She went to her bedroom and dialed 911.

The operator asked whether she was sure it wasn't an iguana. "The lady thought I was crazy."

Frosti had only seen the head, but that was enough: "I told them I was definitely sure."

Soon, everyone else was sure, too – the sheriff's deputies who arrived in 20 minutes and the trapper who came an hour later to capture what turned out to be an 8-foot-8 alligator weighing about 230 pounds.

Catching the creature was no easy task, either.

The alligator had knocked a few things over in the 12-by-8-foot kitchen, including the cover to the garbage compactor and a heavy plate that fell from a counter and apparently left the creature injured and bleeding.

The trapper from Animal Capture had to remove a sliding glass door to get the alligator out of the house. The reptile left gouges in the linoleum floor.

No one was injured, deputies said.

For Frosti, the Monday night encounter began about 10:30 p.m. with loud scratching noises from somewhere near the kitchen.

She had been out for a while and returned about 9 to her home at 20 Evelyn Court near Oldsmar. She was working on the computer in her bedroom, with no line of sight to the kitchen.

"I thought that scratching sound was much too loud to be my cat," Frosti said.

She went toward the kitchen, saw the head and made the call. Not from the phone in the kitchen, though.

She was told to wait in the bedroom, with the door closed, until deputies arrived.

It turns out Frosti had left open a sliding glass door between her living room and a small screened back porch.

"I like the fresh air," she said. "It must have gotten in while I wasn't home."

The alligator, one of many inhabiting ponds around Frosti's East Lake Woods neighborhood, busted through the porch screen, crossed about 10 feet to the open door and entered the house.

The alligator traipsed across the living room carpet, through the dining room and into the kitchen.
"The police told me it may have been interested in my cat," Frosti said.

For about an hour after police arrived, Frosti didn't know if her cat Poe had an unlucky encounter with the alligator. Finally, while waiting outside for the trapper to arrive, Frosti saw Poe hop on a piece of furniture in the living room.

Today, Frosti let Poe outside because it seemed skittish about being in the house.

When Frosti awoke to go to work this morning, she said, there was still some blood on kitchen floor and baseboard.

Neighbors living in the 10 duplexes along Evelyn Court are used to seeing alligators with all the ponds nearby, two of which are a stone's throw from Frosti's place.

Cindy Rogers, who lives across the street, recently saw an alligator crossing the road while she was taking a walk.

"I really don't like them. They're kind of prehistoric," Rogers said.

"I've seen them sunning themselves between the pond and the street," said Emilio Riera.

The neighborhood was in the news during the weekend, too: Someone lost control of their car and ran into Riera's screened porch.

Earlier Monday, a lawn crew working across the street from Frosti's duplex chased an alligator into a pond about 3:30 p.m.

"It must have been 8 or 9 feet long," Mike Cummings, who works with the crew, said this morning.
"Oh my goodness," said Helen Marcik, who lives in the same duplex unit as Frosti, when she was informed this morning of the gator invasion.

A repairman was at the duplex, too, sent by the landlord to fix the hole in the screen.
On Wednesday morning, Frosti is set to tell her story on "The Today Show."

Reporter Neil Johnson can be reached at (813) 259-7731 or njohnson@tampatrib.com.

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