"I was in bed and heard her open the door and then scream and then heard the door slam," Arthur Andrews said. "I went running out and looked outside. The dog couldn't have been two feet from the gator's mouth when my wife grabbed him by his tail and pulled him back into the house, so she had to get that close too," he said. The Andrews called the security officer of their gated community who arrived in his pickup truck and attempted to scare the gator back into the lagoon that neighbors the couple's home. When that only made the gator more agitated the guard told the Andrews they'd have to "Call the professionals."
For the next two hours the Andrews watched the gator from the safety of their front window, as he continued to "kind of case the house," according to Andrews, until "professionals" from Critters Management Inc. arrived. Believing that Andrews' over-the-phone description of the gator as "about 10 feet" would be a typical situation, in which the gator is actually about two feet but the homeowner is scared, the company only sent one man, Joe Maffo, to chase the gator away. "When he saw it, he said there was no way," Andrews recalled, adding that Maffo estimated the gator to weigh about 1,000 pounds.
Maffo first used a snare to try to coax the gator but when the gator snapped the steel cable he turned to a second approach, using both a snare and ropes to secure the gator to a nearby tree. He then left and came back to the couple's home with reinforcement - six additional colleagues - who taped and tied the gator's mouth and legs shut so they could remove the animal from the Andrews' lawn. "It was five hours minimum from the time we saw him to the time they took him away," Andrews said. Andrews believes the alligator was euthanized because its size and aggression prevented it from being released. A representative for Critter Management confirmed that the alligator was harvested by the company.
Sometimes
it helps to talk to someone and vent about your parents, but just don't
call 911, mmkay?
Judge
Raymond Voet of Ionia County, Michigan has a simple rule: if your cell
phone goes off in court, you will be held in contempt of court and fined
$25. He's consistent about enforcement. When his own cell phone rang,
he imposed the penalty on himself. It's a new phone and Judge Voet
wasn't sure how to operate it. But that excuse didn't cut it:
It's
much easier to tell a story about a trip or an expedition that you
didn't take than to actually make the trip. But the tallest tales are
figured out to be hoaxes eventually. For example:
, just yet, but it's shaping up to be fantastic — all about the slow,
lumbering dinosaurs of our childhoods and how our conception of them
morphed into something totally different. He's going to be on Science
Friday on, well, Friday. And he's written them a post about 
This dinosaur was named the Godzilla lizard: Gojirasaurus quayi. But Gojirasaurus
is far from the only species named for fictional characters. There are
species, both existing and extinct, named after Batman, Han Solo,
cartoon characters, and even Muppets! Read about 11 of them (ten animals
and one fungus) 
Do
you stand or sit down in a crowded subway train? Give up your seat to
a pregnant woman or an elderly or do you pretend not to notice?
