Alligator found in alley in plastic bin on city's north side

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- An alligator was found dead in a plastic bin on the city’s north side.

Neighbors say they couldn’t believe it until they saw it with their own eyes.

“I said, you’re joking! So I went outside and looked, and it was a doggone gator out there!”

Michael Pullian tells us he thought his neighbor was joking when he told him about the gator in his alley.

“It was about 3 feet, maybe 4 feet long,” said Pullian. “So that’s a big gator! How did it get back there, we don’t know.”

The alligator was in a plastic bin with water by their trash cans.

“And it had to take two people to lift it up to put it there,” said Tracy Steed.

Steed says he took his trash out before work around 4:30, and it wasn’t there.

But when he got back around 6, the gator’s horrible smell caught his attention.

“The water was kind of red yesterday. I don’t know if it was bleeding or what,” said Steed.

He doesn’t know how it got there either, but he thinks it might have been someone’s pet that got too big.

Steed says he’ll be paying more attention to his surroundings from now on.

“Watch out when you take the garbage out, no telling what’s lurking out there!”

Neighbors tell us the alligator was picked up earlier this afternoon around 1:30.

No word yet on how it got here.