MacDill Air Force Base
MacDill AFB in South Tampa scrambled to get rid of an unwelcome visitor this week when an estimated 8+ foot alligator, a proper dinosaur, snuck onto the tarmac and wedged itself between the wheels of a KC-135 Stratotanker which shoulders the refueling load for the United States Air Force.
For those not familiar with the area, MacDill sits on a peninsula in South Tampa that juts out into Tampa Bay and it is also home to the main headquarters of Central Command (CentCom) AND the headquarters of the US Special Operations Command. All of that is to say there are a lot of very important individuals operating out of MacDill that may or may not need to load up in an instant, and an 8-foot alligator stuck between the wheels of a KC-135 Stratotanker is not ideal for anyone… But it happened, and they dealt with it.
Capturing And Removing The Alligator From MacDill AFB In Tampa
The main MacDill AFB Facebook account shared a video of the massive alligator being caught by some members of FWC (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission) who had their hands full:
According to the MacDill AFB Facebook posts, the huge alligator was safely captured and relocated to the nearby Hillsborough River. Here it is wedging itself between the wheels of the 136-foot aircraft:
There are alligators everywhere in Florida. I feel like that’s a sentence I’ve typed a thousand times here on BroBible as I’m our resident born-and-raised Floridian who grew up in the greater Tampa Bay area and was in the Boy Scouts which imbued me with a deep appreciation for our native species in the Sunshine State.
But even though there are alligators everywhere in Florida this is still a pretty odd spot to see one this large as it’s a peninsula on Tampa Bay which is saltwater. Alligators cannot survive in saltwater for more than a few hours or days and though there are plenty of ponds around, it’s not an ideal place for a gator of that size to live and flourish.
The FWC officers were able to safely relocate it back to the freshwater of the Hillsborough River so all’s well that ends well.