Wildlife officials are investigating after a Florida woman said she came across three decapitated alligators this week.
"It's reprehensible. I don't understand how people could do this," Amy Best, the Loxahatchee Groves resident who made the disturbing discovery, told WPTV.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has confirmed that it found two of the headless gators, and is investigating the incident. They have not determined whether or not a human is responsible for the deaths.
“It’s very hard to know what happened,” FWC spokesperson Carol Lyn Parrish told the Palm Beach Post. “It could have been predation from other wildlife or someone out there who did this.”
Best says she found two of the animals lying on the edge of a canal in her neighborhood, and the third was stuffed into a white container.
When she posted her experience on Facebook, her neighbor, Jeff Gallasch, said he’d seen the same thing.
“It makes me nervous because I have to be more protective,” Gallasch told WPTV. “I have to wonder if someone will do that to my dogs or theirdogs.”
The FWC said though it is alligator season in Florida right now, hunters are limited to two kills per season and they must properly dispose of the bodies.
But Best doesn’t think these were hunters, because whoever—or whatever—beheaded the animals left so much behind.
“They wasted the skin, which is the most valuable part, and then the meat,” she said.
In general, it’s been a creepy year for alligators so far, especially in Florida. One of the creatures killed a child at Disney World in June, and multiple alligators in the state have been found eating human remains.