Florida Golf Course Has Unexpected New Obstacle—Ball-Stealing Alligators

While golf course designers love to add obstacles to keep things interesting, in the South, nature's very own obstacles love to add themselves. If it's not bears fighting flagsticks or sandhill cranes working as security guards, it's Florida's gators interrupting a game by walking off with the ball.

Golfers playing at Plantation Bay Golf and Country Club in Ormond Beach, Florida, were just trying to make par when an uninvited guest joined their party. It was a massive gator, who decided to pick up one of the golf balls the golfers had set on the green.

In a video shot by golfer Mike Harb and shared with FOX 35 Orlando, the massive alligator can be seen picking up the ball in its mouth and meandering down the green. In the footage, one of the golfers explains how they ended up in this very Floridian predicament: "Adam just hit the green and a gator just had the ball in his mouth."

One of the golfers in the party saw this gator's appearance as an opportunity: "Chase him closer to the hole that way your ball, have him just drop it in the hole," one clever golfer can be heard saying in the video.

Sadly, the gator was a little fuzzy on the rules of the game and the clip ends with the alligator walking away, still carrying the golf ball in its mouth. Perhaps he was hoping to woo a mate with the ball, as Fox 35 Orlando notes, that warmer weather means gator mating season, bringing alligators to more residential areas and outdoor recreation spaces.

While the golfer may have lost his ball, it could have been much worse. Back in 2017, a man retrieving golf balls from a water trap at The Palms Course at Rotonda Golf & Country Club in Rotonda, Florida, lost part of his arm to a gator. So if you're playing golf in the South and see a gator, take a break, grab a pimento cheese sandwich, and let the gator play through.