Pool Party Crasher: 8-Foot Gator Ignores Cold Front for a Late-Night Dip in Naples

Alligator found in Naples pool

If you grow up in Florida, you just know—where there’s water, there’s probably a gator lurking. Locals try to warn visitors, but honestly, most people just shrug it off.

Even with cooler temps in Naples, that didn’t stop a nearly 8-foot alligator from going for a midnight swim in someone’s backyard pool.

“This is wild. Nobody believed it, not until we saw the video—especially when he started rolling around. He was huge,” said Rob Emhoff, who lives next door. “My wife got up with our little one to take her to the bathroom, maybe around 1 a.m., and when she came back, she said, ‘Hey, I just heard something splash in the pool.’”

At first, Rob figured it was just the pool filter making noise. Didn’t take long to realize they had an unexpected guest.

“Then we saw this massive shadow, and sure enough, it was a striped alligator,” he told WINK-TV.

The gator was just chilling near the basketball hoop in the deep end—felt almost fitting, since the Florida Gators just won the NCAA men’s basketball championship.

“He was over there at the deep end, then moved closer to the hoop. He just kept hanging out, diving down, popping his head up,” Rob said.

Turns out the gator probably squeezed in through a busted fence.

The Emhoffs called the Collier County non-emergency line, and help showed up in about 10 minutes. It took another 10 to wrangle the stubborn gator—who definitely wasn’t in the mood to leave.

Once they taped his mouth, they loaded him into a trailer—where two other captured gators were already waiting. Apparently, it wasn’t exactly a friendly reunion.

“He was not happy about the other two gators in there,” Rob told WINK News. “They didn’t get along at all.”