Official Florida News Thread - Stop Me If You’ve Heard This

This gator is a long way from home — but thankfully one former Florida man was in the right place at the right time.

Staten Island resident Don Walters, 49, was digging for worms in a park near his Richmond Town home on Tuesday afternoon when he spotted a three-foot alligator — and bravely caught it before police arrived.

“I’ve watched enough TV, plus I’ve lived in Florida so I’ve got with them before,” Walters, a fan of late Australian crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, told The Post.

He quickly sprung into action, running home to get proper gear to catch the croc — who he dubbed Charlie — and lured him in with bait.

“I started throwing blood bait at it and it was eating it and eating it,” he said.

“I just dragged him up on land, got on top of him, held his head, and my wife taped his mouth shut and that was it,” he said.

Once Charlie was captured, his wife Kim Walters bravely taped his snout.

“I just kind of taped it around about six times. He said, ‘That’s good’ and I went, ‘Nope, I think I’ll do it a couple more times.”

He called 311 but “they didn’t know what to do with it” Walters said. “So I called 911. They came real quick,” he said.

Once they arrived, officers found a 3-foot alligator, which they secured with their hands and put in the back of their patrol car.

No one was hurt, and cops said Charlie didn’t put up a lot of resistance.

Video of the incident shared on smartphone app Citizen shows locals cooing and petting the reptile as an officer proudly holds his catch of the day.

It is unclear how the animal came to be in the middle of Staten Island, but it’s believed Charlie may have been someone’s pet.

“It looked real healthy. No wounds on it. Nothing,” Walters said. “He was hungry through. Definitely hungry.”

“Never a dull moment in Staten Island, New York,” he said.

He is being transported to an animal care facility in Brooklyn, police said.

Charlie’s capture comes just days after Chicago also nabbed an alligator in a public lagoon.

Dubbed “Chance the Snapper,” the croc became a minor local celebrity — with hundreds of locals descending on the Humbolt Park Lagoon for alligator-watching parties.

A Long Island family also made a jaw-dropping discovery Saturday when they found a baby alligator trying to beat the heat in their backyard pool.

Alligators are not native to New York but it’s not the first time that they have surfaced in the state.

More than a dozen — assumed to be illegal pets who outgrew their welcome — were captured over a nine-month period in 2012 and 2013.

In other croc news, Tennessee police last week warned the public about the threat of “meth-gators” — advising people not to flush their drugs down the toilet and poison marine life.