A WOMAN valued her wallet so much that she climbed into an alligator enclosure where it had fallen to retrieve it—all the while being followed by a young boy who appeared to be her son.
The risky encounter at Safari North Wildlife Park in Brainerd, Minnesota, occurred on Saturday, according to Facebook user Ashlynn Curtis, who posted her video of it.
The video, obtained by TMZ, begins with a young boy in a grassy area of the alligator pit saying: “I can’t get out, I don’t know how.”
It then pans over toward the pond, where a woman is shown using a long stick to poke at the water with dozens of alligators—all while speaking on her cell phone.
When she sees the boy, supposedly her son, she runs after him toward the fence but stops short of making sure he gets out.
She then hangs up on her cell phone and appears to refocus on getting her wallet in the water, while the boy runs to another side of the pond where the gators are not congregated.
“Don’t do that, you could get bitten by an alligator,” a child is heard saying from the elevated viewing area where the video is being recorded.
“Don’t do that, you’ll get eaten,” the young voice is heard saying again.
As the boy gets within a foot of the water, the woman stands on a wooden platform on the other side and throws rocks into the pond to try to get the alligators to move away from her wallet.
Her method seems to work, as some gators swim away toward the rocks, but one of the reptiles jumps out of the water into the air.
An adult on the viewing platform is heard explaining to kids who are watching, “They’re swimming, they’re swimming away so she can grab her wallet.”
Sure enough, the woman reaches in and successfully recoups her wallet.
She appears to walk calmly back to the fence, with her son following at a distance.
As they both climb back to safety, the woman is seen pointing and saying, “It’s your fault for coming in here when I told you not to. For f***s sake.”
An onlooking child is heard saying that it “happens.”
Kevin Vogel, the owner of wildlife park, told The Sun: “We are thankful no person or animal was hurt.
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“We have clear postings and fencing to keep guests out of animal areas and have never dealt with a situation like this since opening our park seven years ago.
“The woman has since apologized.”
TMZ reported that sources close to the wildlife park said that staff members were not aware of what happened until the video began going viral and that the wildlife park wants to press charges on the woman, once she is identified, for child endangerment.
The park’s fences and signs are intended to protect visitors as well as the animals, according to TMZ.
In her Facebook post, Curtis wrote that the woman “went INSIDE the enclosure to get it as well as her child” and that “this was was honestly the craziest thing I have ever seen.”