Florida Alligator: A sheriff's deputy knocked the wind out of the 'alligator'.
Alligator sightings are not uncommon in Florida. These large reptiles have been reported from the strangest of places in the US state - everywhere from golf courses to swimming pools. So when one sheriff's office received a call about an alligator in a storage shed, they went in fully expecting to find a large reptile.
What they found instead was a fearsome-looking inflatable pool toy.
According to news website Click Orlando, Deputy Mark Texler responded to a report of an alligator in a shed. Records show that a woman called 911 - USA's emergency helpline - saying that her husband was moving boxes from a storage shed outside their Winter Haven apartment when he saw an alligator - or so he thought.
"My husband went to the storage garage and there was an alligator locked in there," the woman said during a call placed on August 24. "He says it's big, he says it's big," she added.
Deputy Trexler reached the spot and managed to knock the wind out of the apex predator - quite literally. "He came...he saw...he conquered the beast. He even knocked the wind out of it. Literally. The gator turned out to be a pool floatie," the police department wrote, sharing photos of the realistic-looking inflatable.
The tweet has amused many on the microblogging platform, collecting hundreds of 'likes'.
"Lol!! he sure did get it good!" wrote one person in the comments section.
"Looks like this call went 'swimmingly'," another quipped.
This is not the first case of mistaken identity that has gone viral on social media. Recently, a British police department received reports of a "large predator" on the loose - and reached the spot to find something quite different.
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