A 7-foot alligator squeezed through a ground-level window screen and sent a woman into hysterics before her husband killed it with a handgun early Friday.
The gator opened its jaws wide near Gail Ennis, then slithered through the living room and dining room before Howard Ennis killed it in the kitchen."We've had lots of house break-ins, but never before by an alligator," said Delray Beach police spokesman Mike Wright.
The alligator was still outside the lakeside home when their bird began flapping in its cage and woke them up, Ennis said.
"My wife walked over to the window and she looked down," Ennis said. "Then she started shouting: `It's an alligator!"'
She started phoning the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission when the gator crawled inside their darkened living room.
"She heard the screen crinkling or crunching," Ennis said. "He opened his mouth wide, I mean wide, and that's when she went hysterical."
The couple grabbed their two wildly barking dogs and headed for the bedroom. Then Ennis got his gun.
"He shot it three times with the .357 Magnum revolver. It hit the alligator just under the left eye and killed it," Wright said. "Big alligator. Seven-foot."
Two police officers were in the kitchen about 15 minutes later when the dead gator's muscles twitched.
"Both policemen drew their guns. They just couldn't believe it," Ennis said, laughing.