10-foot alligator hanging out in parking lot surprises SC motel guest

A nearly 10-foot alligator showed up at the Knights Inn Point South motel in Yemassee this week, but it didn’t get a room.

A motel guest discovered the alligator next to his vehicle early Tuesday morning, according to comments and photos posted on Facebook by Jasper County Sheriff’s Office deputy John Mitaly, a K9 handler.

“When your K9 handler skills come in handy and you adopt a new partner. ... Ima need a bigger cage,” Mitaly’s caption reads.

Prakash Patel, the motel’s manager, said his guest was trying to get to his vehicle to go to work when he came back to the front desk. “There’s an alligator near my car!” Patel said the guest told him.

Patel said the animal was just under 10 feet long.

He suspects it came from one of the many ponds where he knows gators live in the area. The motel is located at 420 Campground Road and is a neighbor of the Point South KOA campground.

The men watched the alligator for a while, but it didn’t leave, so they called the Sheriff’s Office, Patel said.

David Lucas, regional public information coordinator for S.C. Department of Natural Resources, confirmed that DNR was contacted by the Sheriff's Office and dispatched Matt McDaniel to deal with the alligator.

Lucas said DNR’s initial report indicated only that the alligator was removed from the scene.

“It doesn’t say it was euthanized, but I would be surprised if it wasn’t,” Lucas said.

In the Lowcountry, roughly 100 alligators are ruled as "nuisance alligators" every year, Lucas previously told The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette. "Of all those calls, only about five alligators are relocated."

When asked via Facebook to talk about the alligator, McDaniel said he could not comment.

During mating season, which alligator experts say was kicked into high gear by the sudden onset of warm weather in late spring, males move around in order to find females.

Lowcountry residents have reported a flood of alligator sightings within the last few weeks.

One of those alligators ended up on the school grounds at May River High School.

Another ended up trapped on the front porch of a family's home in the middle of the night.

In a tragic case, a family's vehicle hit an alligator crossing I-95, and a mother and two children were killed.

This story was originally published May 22, 2018 at 9:05 AM with the headline "10-foot alligator hanging out in parking lot surprises SC motel guest."