As alligators go, it was a small one. So small that people in Florida might not even look twice.

But this one was here in D.C. Specifically, in the waters of the Washington Channel at The Wharf in Southwest.

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“I saw him right there suntanning, and they tried to get it, and he splooshed right back into the water,” 23-year-old Phoenix Norwood said.

After the dockmaster sent out an alert Thursday morning warning residents of the marina at The Wharf that what appeared to be a juvenile alligator had been spotted in the water there, Norwood just had to see it.

After more than an hour of looking, he not only found it, but after grabbing a net on a pole from his family’s houseboat, he scooped it out of the Washington Channel.

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