Families who complained that their drains were blocked were stunned when engineers revealed what the cause was - an 11ft long dead alligator.
Experts said that the animal was "abnormally large", measuring 3ft wide and found in a 4ft wide space.
Drainage staff in Florida were called to homes in the Whiskey Creek neighbourhood of Fort Myers.
The Lee County Department of Transportation removed the dead beast from a storm drain catch basin on Monday June 13.
Lee DOT was alerted to the situation by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, which received a call related to an odour coming from a storm drain near the 1300 block of Chalon Lane in Whiskey Creek.
Staff looped a line around the dead gator’s neck and brought in an excavator to pull the animal from the catch basin.
The team then snapped one photo and the gator was deposited in a DOT dump truck and taken to a DOT site designated for disposal of dead animals and other DOT debris. The animal was buried.