“Usually, I would have said that the chances of alligators coming into a home and coming into the basement is pretty far-fetched. But we just had an incident where an old lady found an alligator in her kitchen. It broke in through the front door, but she behaved sensibly and it was taken care of,” Ross said. “However, it’s unlikely and unreported. Alligators are generally fairly shy of people. Usually just getting out of their way, using a stick or broom or shovel to just push it out of the way would do the trick.”
“Crawl” follows in the footsteps of movie classics like “Jaws” and “Lake Placid,” both of which play on the fear of animal attacks. “Crawl” paints alligators as the bad guy with one of their teasers for the movie having the tagline, “If the storm doesn’t get you …. they will.”
“Think of what Jaws did for sharks,” Wasilewski said. “With social media, and how Hollywood can digitize movies to make anything happen, I would like to hope people are smarter nowadays and there won’t be any mass hysteria. If you stay out of the water, you’re out of danger. Everyone in Florida knows you don’t go swimming with alligators.”
Savannah Boan, Crocodilian Enrichment Coordinator and International Ambassador for Gatorland, said the theme park will host a discussion panel July 11, during which people can ask experts about alligators and discuss common misconceptions.