Surf Cat

steellafferty  | &nbspPhoto Credit:&nbspInstagram

A golfer playing at the ChampionsGate Country Club in Orlando had an unexpected visitor during a game on Wednesday. Steel Lafferty, a wakeboarder by profession, was just about to take a shot when he noticed a 7-foot alligator taking a stroll through the golf link.

But Lafferty seemed pretty unfazed by the presence of a giant reptile just a few meters away from him. He told CNN that he wasn’t too worried because he had seen many gators in his wakeboarding career.  

“I wakeboard professionally so I’m always in the water and I’ve kind of been around gators my whole life. There was a bit of a worry, but it seemed like he was doing his own thing so I let him go,” Lafferty told CNN.

In a video posted on Instagram, Lafferty can be seen taking a shot the same time the alligator strolls by.

The video has garnered over 90,000 views in just four days. It has also been widely shared on Twitter and Facebook.

Although the alligator was 7-feet tall, Lafferty didn’t lose focus and completed a good shot. “My shot was really good and that was really the only thing I was worried about. I had to make par on the hole because we had a bet going and I was more worried about winning the bet than getting eaten,” he told the news website.

Crocodiles and alligators grace the headlines of leading international news websites on a daily basis. While many reports talk about harmless sightings, some highlight the threats associated with the reptiles. 

On Sunday, a man in his mid-70s was attacked and bitten on the arm by a crocodile that once belonged to Cuban communist revolutionary Fidel Castro. The incident took place when the man was attending a crayfish party in Stockholm’s Skansen Aquarium.

The man had climbed up a rock in a restricted area of the facility to deliver a speech. The elevated area was just adjacent to the crocodile enclosure.

A Skansen spokesperson said the man was standing with his back against the enclosure and his arm inadvertently stretched over the protective barrier.