Surprise! Two alligators spotted swimming around Forest Acres area lake (+Video)

Now you wouldn’t exactly say the welcome mat has been put out, but folks who live around Lake Katherine in Columbia are definitely on the lookout for two newcomers to the neighborhood – Alli and Gator.

Yep, you got that right. A long, hot summer with nothing better to do than wonder when the heat is going to break has just turned into a suburban alligator hunt replete with at least one young angler using whole hot dogs for bait.

“Ali is the little alligator,” said lake neighbor Julie Latham, “and Gator is the big one – he’s about 8 feet long. I heard that they probably came up from the Congaree Swamp. I don’t know what they want. I mean, they’re alligators.”

The creatures were discovered about two weeks ago by 13-year-old Davis Farnsworth of Charlotte. He was visiting his Columbia grandparents who live near the lake.

“I was fishing right after a storm. It was about 4 p.m. I was fishing for bass. I looked out in the water and saw something and thought it was a log, but I hadn’t seen a log there before the storm.

“I cast my line right over the top of the log to see if it might be something else. It snapped back at my line and I said, ‘Oh, that’s definitely a gator.’ ”

Davis and I were chatting it up Friday, midday, while standing on a small bridge on Woodlake Drive that separates the larger Lake Katherine from the smaller ’Lil Lake Katherine. Davis had a whole hot dog on the end of his fishing line. He dropped it into the water and sure enough, a few minutes later, a big, fat gator floated up from the murky water.

“It’s certainly bringing the neighborhood together,” Latham quipped.

“We have a golf cart and we just come by here a couple of times every day,” said Ainsley Johnston whose two boys – 5-year-old John and 3-year-old Oliver – were peering through partitions in the bridge to see what they could see.

I asked the little guys what they thought about all this business and they replied, “Alligators! Alligators!”

“My guess is that they came up Gills Creek from the Congaree River,” said another passerby, Bruce Guignard. “They may be in search of cooler water.”

Well, whatever they’re in search of, they better look out.

A “depredation permit” has been issued by the S.C. Department of Natural Resources to a Lake Katherine homeowners association to “kill the alligators and remove them from the lake,” said Willie Simmons, a DNR wildlife coordinator.

“You can’t just move an alligator,” he explained, “or they’ll go right back to where they were trapped.”

So I asked Mr. Simmons where he thought Alli and Gator came from and he said, “That’s easy. They take to the natural creeks and river systems and go where they want to go.”

I see.

Thank you, Mr. Simmons!

And stay tuned.

This story was originally published June 26, 2015 at 12:52 PM.