A Florida woman’s phone buzzed with a motion alert, then her doorbell camera showed an 8-foot alligator at her front door

A Palm Bay, Florida family got an unexpected wake-up call after their Ring doorbell camera picked up motion at their front door. According to BroBible, an eight-foot alligator was captured on camera attempting to get inside the home.

The homeowner, identified only as Wynn, said her phone buzzed with a motion alert that woke her up. She and her family then watched through a window as the alligator lingered near the entrance, seemingly unwilling to leave on its own. A state-licensed trapper had to be called in to remove the animal and relocate it, a process that reportedly kept the family confined to their home for an hour or two before they could safely go outside.

Palm Bay is located in Brevard County along Florida’s Atlantic coast, according to Visit Florida, and is home to natural areas like the Turkey Creek Sanctuary, a wetland and forest preserve known to host alligators alongside other local wildlife.

Florida has had a rough week for gator encounters

Florida is home to an estimated 1.3 million alligators, and sightings are common enough that most residents barely notice them in nearby ponds or canals. Alligators actually approaching a front door, however, is a rarer occurrence. This particular incident wasn’t an isolated one either. Just days earlier, a Florida homeowner checked a 5:45 a.m. Ring alert and found a nine-foot alligator floating in their swimming pool.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission runs a Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program specifically for situations like these. The agency generally classifies an alligator as a nuisance once it reaches at least four feet in length and appears to pose a risk to people, pets, or property.

FWC receives somewhere between 14,000 and 15,000 nuisance alligator complaints statewide each year, according to the agency’s own figures, and dispatches licensed trappers to respond to reports that meet that threshold. Attacks on people remain comparatively rare given how common alligators are across the state.

FWC has tracked unprovoked alligator bites since 1948, and through February 2026 the agency had recorded 500 total unprovoked bites statewide, including 346 classified as major injuries, 153 as minor, and 32 confirmed fatalities. Residents who encounter a gator matching nuisance criteria are advised to call the toll-free Nuisance Alligator Hotline rather than attempt to handle the animal themselves, since doing so is illegal and bites can lead to serious infection even when they aren’t life-threatening.

For the Palm Bay family, the ordeal ended without anyone getting hurt, and the alligator was safely relocated away from the neighborhood. No further incidents involving that particular animal have been reported since.