Cop Wrangles Alligator with Bare Hands on Florida Doorstep: 'Can't Take the Country Out of the Boy'

See you later, alligator!

On Friday, Aug. 23, a set of Florida homeowners were faced with an unexpected — and dangerous — house guest after an alligator appeared on their front porch.

In body cam footage of the situation shared by the Fulshear Police Department on Facebook, Lieutenant Bill Henry, the officer assigned to the gator removal, approached the reptile with a fearless attitude, because, as the department phrased it, "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy."

In the clip, which has received over 130,000 views, Henry approaches the Florida home as the owners stand far from the building, where a ticked-off alligator stands between them and their front door.

Moving closer to the reptile with his bare hands, Henry then can be heard telling someone that he has a pole with him but had no problem facing the gator sans equipment. “This one’s kind of small, so I’ll grab it,” he said.

The reptile then backs up and makes a hissing noise, but the officer quickly grabs it by the neck in one swift maneuver and carries him away from the porch.

“Look at you. You’re a hero,” a woman can be heard saying off-camera as Henry walks off with the critter.

According to a comment on the body cam footage, Henry’s run-in with the gator — which happened around 10 a.m. local time — was not even his first of the day.

“That is his second catch of the day,” the commenter wrote alongside a photo of the cop holding another small reptile. The poster said that the photo was snapped around 7 a.m. the same morning.

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Henry’s gator-wrangling may have amassed lots of views for his fearless approach, but the actual act is quite common for officers in the area, so much so that the Fulshear Police Department says new officers’ answering their first reptile-related rescue has become a ​​”rite of passage” of sorts.

"Here at the Fulshear Police Department, it seems we have a bit of a ‘rite of passage’ tradition,” a post shared by the department says. “We receive so many alligator-related calls that it's practically guaranteed that each new officer will eventually experience their own ‘alligator encounter.’ ”