It is not every day someone reports an alligator in Lake Michigan and the report is true,” the city of Waukegan said in a Facebook post.

And, as it turns out, it is true.

A local guy named David Castaneda was kayaking and fishing in the lake when he noticed something just a bit unusual about 5 feet from his kayak.

That unusual thing was a 4 foot alligator with its snout taped closed with heavy blue tape.

From ABC-7:

"It was just so weird, something out of the ordinary," he said. "It's not supposed to be here, so it's not - it can't defend itself and it had its mouth closed, so it was going to die if I left it there. So I just changed my lure to one that was more of a bigger hook and threw it over its back and it hooked on to the little scales that were on its back. And I started pulling it slowly towards me so it wouldn't freak out," he said.

The animal was eventually transported to Wildlife Discovery Center in Lake Forest, where caretakers said although being stressed out, the alligator has won a new lease on life.

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