This Guy Says His Illegal 200-Pound Pet Gator Liked to ‘Come Sit on My Lap’

Alligators are giant, terrifying beasts that look like they crawled out from some sort of primordial sludge millennia ago just to tear our supple flesh from our bones. They cannibalistically chow down on weaker gators, don’t give a fuck about being frozen in a river, and will headbutt you into oblivion or worse if given the chance. All that aside, people continue to have some strange desire to make them their pets. They drag them to dorm rooms and on beer runs, ignoring that fact that inside the gator’s lizard brain, we’re probably all just delicious, steaming turkeys.

This week, animal control seized a seven-foot, 200-pound alligator that a Missouri man was illegally keeping as a pet in his home—and the guy really, really, really wants it back, WTKR reports.

Kansas City officers who showed up to evict 35-year-old Sean Casey from his rental on Wednesday morning were presumably pretty surprised when they stumbled across a house full of exotic animals, including three snakes and the gator itself, which Casey had named “Catfish.”

It took four animal control workers to finally wrestle the gator out of a small pool and into submission, so they could safely transport it off the property. But Casey’s not letting the gator go without a fight.

“I don’t know what the procedure will be to get him back, but I’m going to fight to get him back,” Casey told local Fox affiliate WDAF.

Catfish may be a giant, evil-looking beast that took a team of experts to tame, but Casey swears the gator was a sweet, wonderful pet. “He had his own way of saying ‘hi’ to people. They’re not big ferocious animals like people think. They have personalities,” Casey said. “He was like a dog. I don’t think he knew he was an alligator.”

According to Casey, he adopted Catfish when the gator was a foot-and-a-half-long baby, and he’s been raising it on a steady diet of chicken nuggets, steak, fish, and deer ever since.

“He liked to come out and play,” Casey went on. “Oddly enough, he liked to come sit on my lap.”

Unfortunately for him, it’s illegal to keep an alligator in your house in Kansas City, so Catfish is now in the care of an animal sanctuary called Monkey Island Rescue, presumably sitting on someone else’s lap until Casey can figure out a way to reunite with his sweet, sweet boy.

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