A Paxton, Fla., family got a huge surprise – well, about a five-and-a-half-foot one – Sunday when they found an alligator in their swimming pool.

Shanda Cassidy said she was washing dishes Sunday when she spotted the interloper.

“I looked out the window, and there he was,” Cassidy said. Cassidy said her husband, Jaime, called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who sent out a game warden.

“The whole entire time this happening, I thought, ‘This is so crazy,’” Cassidy said. “It took the game warden about two hours to get the gator out of the pool because of the rain storm. He used a deep-see fishing rod with some kind of weight and treble hook. He’d throw it and drag it until it caught. I kid you not, when he snagged him, he reeled it like a fish.”

Cassidy said when the alligator got close to the side of the in-ground pool, the game warden grabbed it by the tail and pulled it out.

“Then he sat on top of him, taped its mouth shut and bound its legs,” she said. “It was just like you saw on TV.”

The alligator was relocated to a new home.

Cassidy said the family’s home is surrounded by ponds and creeks, and “with all this rain, I guess he just wandered in,” she said of their visitor.

“It doesn’t help that the salt generator in our pool went down and turned the pool green,” she said. “You can bet your sweet bottom that we’re draining it, and it’s getting fixed. We don’t need another visitor like that.”