Watch as camera finds an alligator relaxing in storm water pipe under Florida city

A scene straight out of a horror movie played out in Florida when maintenance workers lowered a camera into a storm drain and found an alligator looking back.

It happened Friday, May 5, in Oviedo, just outside Orlando, and video of the creepy moment shows the alligator appeared about 50 feet into the storm water pipe.

“At first, they thought it was a toad and in the video, you see two little glowing eyes until you get closer,” the city wrote on Facebook.

“But when it turned around, they saw the long tail of the alligator and followed it through the pipes! You can see in the video they got about 340 feet in before the robot got stuck on a little indentation and the alligator meandered off.”

The alligator was estimated at 5 feet, which is on the small side in Florida. It was detected with a four-wheel robotic camera that is used to “investigate any anomalies under the roadway” such as leaks and cracks.

The robot clearly caught the alligator off guard. It first tries backing up, then turns and scrambles in the opposite direction.

City officials suspect it entered the pipe via a storm water collection pond. Among the unknowns is whether the gator was lost or simply exploring the city’s underside in search of food.

The video had been seen more than 6,000 times as of May 10, and Oviedo officials were the first to make a horror movie analogy, likening it to the film “Snakes on a Plane.”

“How about ‘Gator in a Pipe’? the city wrote. “Just another reason not to go wandering down into the storm water pipes! Thank goodness our crews have a robot.”

This story was originally published May 10, 2023 at 10:22 AM with the headline "Watch as camera finds an alligator relaxing in storm water pipe under Florida city."