MISSOURI CITY, Texas – It was hard to spot, but if you looked closely, you could get a glimpse of an alligator who was hiding out, under a bush, in a woman's front yard in Missouri City.
"I noticed people in my yard and I thought, 'What's going on?'" said Tanya Chaovaletz.
Chaovaletz, a piano teacher, said one of her students spotted the gator.
"He came in and told me he saw an alligator," Chaovaletz said.
People in the neighborhood near the intersection of Glenn Lakes Lane and Masters Lane said they have seen gators before, but not like this.
"I've seen alligators in the lake over there plenty of times, but this is the first one I've seen in somebody's front yard," said neighbor Victor Hicks.
"Most of the people driving by can't even notice that it's there," said neighbor Rafik Sandford. "It's scary. You could just walk up on it. It's a game changer."
Missouri City police and animal control kept the cars moving and people away from the alligator until a state game warden could come and safely removed the reptile.
Officials estimated it was between 6 feet to 6 1/2 feet long.
The alligator was tied up and put in the back of a pickup truck to be transported to Wharton County, where it will be released into the wild.