THE FACTS (Clute, Texas) 13 August 07 Girl finds alligator under her LJ home (Jason Smith)
Lake Jackson: While under her house helping her father fix a pipe for the kitchen sink Sunday, 13-year-old Jonnie Oury noticed two glowing eyes staring at her in the distance.
Showing no fear of what lurked in the distance she crawled a little closer to see what it was.
“I thought it was a turtle, but I wanted to make sure,” Oury said.
About 5 inches away from the creature she squinted her eyes to make out what it was when it let out a hiss, and at that moment she realized what it was — an alligator, she said.
“I screamed and started crawling backwards as fast as I could,” Oury said.
As soon as she told her father, he grabbed a 10-foot piece of wood and wrapped some wire around it to make a noose and pulled the reptile out from under their home in the 700 block of Winding Way.
“I measured it to be 3 feet and 6 inches long,” said James Oury, Jonnie’s father.
After trapping the alligator they put it in a small metal cage and called the Lake Jackson Humane Department to come and retrieve it, James Oury said.
“If the humane department doesn’t take it, we will carry it ourselves to the Brazos and let it go,” he said.
While the Ourys do not know exactly where the alligator came from, they believe it might have come from a ditch that runs behind their home, James Oury said.
Even though Jonnie Oury was scared initially, she quickly regained her composure and acted bravely by shining a flashlight under the house for her father to see, she said.
“Jonnie is one brave little girl to have helped catch it,” James Oury said. “Who would have thought that a gator would be under your house?”
Girl finds alligator under her LJ home