No, you’re seeing things. You really did just see a barefoot man wrangle on alligator on the side of a Florida highway, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) wrote on Facebook.
The department assured its residents, “If you were cruising down I-95/I-295 on the Southside yesterday and thought you saw a barefoot man wrestling a giant alligator in the median—nope, your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you. That really happened.”
The incident occurred on April 27, when the JSO joined forces with Florida Fish & Wildlife, the Florida Highway Patrol, and “local gator-wrangling legend” Mike Dragich to tame the reptile.
Indeed, Dragich, who’s known on social media as the Blue Collar Brawler, managed to get “this beast off the road and keep everyone safe.”
As video the JSO posted showed, Dragich accomplished that task by getting the gator onto the shoulder of the highway, before muzzling it and putting it in the back of a pickup truck.
All of this went down as cars sped past Dragich and the animal in both directions.
“Just another totally normal day in the Sunshine State,” the JSO quipped.
Dragich shared the same video on Instagram, joking in the caption, “Why did the alligator cross the road?”
He also shared another clip of the wrangling. “Hey bro, what’s your deadlift?” he jokingly asked in the caption.
Who Is Alligator Wrangler Mike Dragich?
This wasn’t Dragich’s first time helping officials. Last summer, he assisted the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department in safely removing another alligator, The Palm Beach Post reported.
Dragich has 385,000 followers on Instagram, all of whom watch in awe as he shares videos of himself wrangling alligators.
A licensed alligator trapper, Dragich founded Project Saviors Outdoors, a religious charity that works to fight veteran suicide through the outdoors.
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