Wild crocodile found outside Michigan home, cops say. ‘I thought it was a joke’

What is a crocodile native to South America doing in Michigan, where encounters are more likely with suburban streets than with the wetlands it calls home?

It’s a question Hampton Township officers may never get an answer for after their odd Sept. 23 discovery.

“In my 29 years of service, I’ve never had a call like this before,” Hampton Township Public Safety Lt. Todd Becker told MLive.com.

The Hampton Township Public Safety Department said it received a call “for what appeared to be an alligator in the front yard” of a home, according to a Facebook post.

But upon their arrival, officers realized the reptile wasn’t an alligator, but rather a crocodile.

Officers said the 3-foot South American crocodile was found “relaxing under a crab apple tree.”

“It was just lying there in the nice, fresh-cut grass,” Becker told MLive.com. “I thought it was a joke at first, because it wasn’t moving or nothing.”

After being corralled, the crocodile was relocated to the Birch Run Zoo, authorities said.

Investigators are unclear how the crocodile ended up out in the wild. In Hampton Township, it is illegal for reptiles “not ordinarily of a domestic nature” to be kept in a person’s home.

American crocodiles can be seen in Florida, but it’s rare for them to be spotted anywhere else in the United States.

They are most common “on the islands of Cuba, Jamaica, and Hispaniola, as well as along both coasts of southern Mexico and Central America, south to Ecuador on the Pacific coast of South America, and Venezuela on the Atlantic coast,” according to the National Park Service.

Hampton Township is about a 115-mile drive northwest from Detroit.

This story was originally published September 25, 2025 at 7:56 AM with the headline "Wild crocodile found outside Michigan home, cops say. ‘I thought it was a joke’."