It’s not surprising that alligators were roaming just off the beach of Disney’s Seven Seas Lagoon where a 2-year-old was grabbed by one. The state has more than a million alligators, and they can be found in all kinds of water, not just swamps and rivers—swimming pools, too.
“This is Florida, and it’s not uncommon for alligators to be in bodies of water,” Orange Country Sheriff Jerry Demings told CNN.
On Tuesday night, an alligator grabbed the young boy whose family was staying at the Disney resort near Orlando. The child was wading along the lagoon’s edge when the animal dragged him into the water. His father then tried to wrestle his toddler from the jaws of the animal—in vain.
The area where the resort is located has a large lake system. The lagoon is connected to a series of canals that all feed into larger bodies of water and the alligator could have sneaked in through a swamp, unnoticed.
“Even if you tried to evacuate all the nuisance alligators that get into swamps or pools at night, you probably couldn’t. An alligator is not easy to spot—it’s a dark, ambush animal that generally lays back quietly before it attacks,” she adds.
