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Gator causes delays along bike path MANATEE COUNTY, Florida (HeraldTribune) -- A seven-foot alligator, reluctant to leave the shade of a woman's Chrysler, took a bite out of her car bumper yesterday. Carolyn Christian was on her way to a meeting Wednesday evening when she spotted Sheriff's Deputy Todd Zink in her front yard. She didn't immediately notice the gator lying in the driveway under her 2002 Chrysler Concorde in the Regency Oaks subdivision off Moccasin Wallow Road. Zink was waiting for a trapper and making sure no one got too close to the gator's resting place. "It's a good thing because, you know, I could have been bit," Christian said Thursday afternoon. It's not the first time Christian's had a gator in her yard. Last year, a trapper captured a six-foot specimen there. She said there are alligators in the pond behind her house and in the water hazards in the nearby golf course. But Thursday's event was a page out of television's "Crocodile Hunter." When the trapper, licensed by the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, arrived and began pulling the gator out, it lunged and took a six-inch by 18-inch chunk out of Christian's rear bumper. Christian now has a good tale for friends and relatives, a video tape of the action and a steel-blue souvenir. The video will come in handy as proof to more skeptical insurance adjusters. It was the first report of gator bite car damage for the employee who answered her call, Christian said. She wanted to know who owned the gator, which was taken away and killed.
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