Texas dad wrangles alligator before daughter's first day of school

Aug. 17 (UPI) -- A Missouri City, Texas, man was forced to wrangle an alligator after it blocked his front door ahead of his daughter's first day of school.

Mike Trinh, who owns a seafood restaurant when he is not wrestling wildlife, told Houston's KPRC-TV that his daughter found the alligator right outside of their home, preventing her from getting in the car to go to school.

"I woke up this morning groggy. I'm ready to just take my kids to school. It's my daughter's first day in middle school," Trinh told the news station. "So she runs back [saying], 'Dad! There's an alligator in the front door!' I'm thinking she's joking, not wanting to go to school. I say, 'Just stop! We're going to school today. Just stop it.'"

Upon further investigation, though, Trinh found that his daughter was telling the truth -- there was indeed a large alligator laying on their driveway.

Trinh called multiple wildlife rescue facilities, but none of them were able to make it out to tend to the alligator, he said.

Determined to get his daughter to school, Trinh said that he channeled the late Steve Irwin, whose show The Crocodile Hunter he would watch consistently, to figure out a solution.

Knowing that covering the alligator's eyes would help calm it down, Trinh threw a towel over the animal's head.

"First one, missed! Second one, kind of a miss!" he said. "And you could see the alligator [was angry] -- its mouth was open."

Following this, he was able to get around the alligator to get his daughter to school, but when he returned home, the creature was still there.

Trinh then held the alligator's mouth closed while his other daughter, just 19 years old, taped the reptile's powerful jaws closed with duct tape.

Trinh and a friend then drove the alligator to a nearby pond and released it into the wild.

"Once we removed the tape. It didn't do anything," Trinh said. "It hissed. I crossed it off the list. I'm going to wrestle an alligator today."

Assuming that nobody would believe them, Trinh had his daughter filmed the entire ordeal, adding, "I think if [my daughter] told her friends at school, they probably wouldn't believe her."

According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the American alligator is a commonly found reptile in the state.

The department noted that, while alligators typically shy away from humans, they can "become perceived as a nuisance when they establish territories around people."

"As human populations in Texas continue to expand, there have been an increased number of encounters between people and alligators," the department said.

Despite attacks being rare, people have died at the hands of alligators before.

This past Monday, a South Carolina woman was apparently killed by an alligator after she slipped and fell while gardening.

A large alligator was later found guarding the woman's body in a nearby pond.