The sight of the toothy neighbor brings tears to a Tampa Palms woman, but her husband gets a kick out of the 6-foot alligator lying on their porch.
By RODNEY THRASH
Published April 25, 2004
TAMPA PALMS - "The gentleman" showed up at their doorstep groggy-eyed and unannounced.
"You have a guest," Khorsand Khorsandian said to his wife April 17. "Why (will) you not open the door?" Sherin Khorsandian, asleep in the couple's bedroom, was not the least bit interested. Nor was she expecting anyone. Khorsand must be up to his scheming ways again, she figured.
Khorsand begged.
"Come see the guest," he said.
He cajoled.
"Come," he said. "There's something really new."
Finally, Sherin obliged.
She peered through the glass door overlooking the ivory-tiled walkway of the couple's Sanctuary Drive home. There, the "guest" lay with one eye open and the other closed. His 61/2-foot frame, scaly back, sharp teeth and green hue were undeniable.
Sherin's eyes started to well with tears. She couldn't speak, she was so frightened by the sight before her.
Khorsand had to make the call.
911, what's your emergency? the dispatcher asked.
"A big alligator lying outside my door," he said.
For a half hour, the Khorsandians waited. And so did their reptilian guest.
"He was tired," Khorsand, 81, said. "Just lying down and resting."
Sherin, 77, continued sobbing.
"I was shocked," she said. "I couldn't believe this (was) happening." Khorsand, on the other hand, was lighthearted and anxious to tell somebody of the couple's discovery. He hurried across the street to the Bertrams. This was a Kodak moment, he told Albert Bertram .
"If you have a camera, bring it," Khorsand told his neighbor.
Camera?
"To show to our children and grandchildren," he said.
"It was something new."
One of the 4- by 6-inch snapshots shows the gator, mouth gaped. Another shows a Tampa police officer poking and prodding the alligator with a stick, trying to force the four-legged creature back to the pond behind the Khorsandian's home. Sherin is in the foreground, watching from the doorway.
"He had a stick, (a) 4- or 5-foot stick, just trying to push him out," Khorsand said.
Initially, the gator wouldn't budge. The officer called for reinforcements. A second officer arrived and "slowly, slowly, he went back," he said.
The tears that were streaming down Sherin's face Saturday have since dried.
"I'm okay," she said.
Khorsand, however, took it a step further.
"I like him," he said of the gator. "I don't mind if again he comes.
"This is not their fault. It's our fault. This place belongs to them. We just recently came."
Although Khorsand has extended an invitation to the gator, he does have one request.
"Come at daytime," he said. "I don't want to step on him at night."
