Don’t be surprised if you soon see William Elliott at a seafood restaurant – bandaged up, but dining on alligator.

“After the dang thing bit me, I’d like to get me some gator tail. He bit me, so I’d like to bite him,” Elliott said.

It was on Tiffentown Road, not far from Clear Creek Golf Course, about 7 p.m. Saturday that Elliott and some other people found the 5-foot reptile in the middle of road.

They decided to assist the gator out of harm’s way, but as they did it bit Elliott on his thumb and arm.

“The idea was to move it out of the road and hold him until the conservation officer got there,” Elliott said.

The alligator showed no gratitude for Elliot or the noose prepared to assist in the effort.

“He grabbed me by my thumb and jerked me around and bit me on my arm,” Elliott said.

American alligators have between 74 and 80 teeth. Elliott had to get 17 stitches to repair the damage to his thumb and arm.

Elliott and a few others eventually got the noose around the alligator’s neck. It was on the side of the road by the time conservation officers Sgt. Charlie Gross and Sgt. Tracy Tullos arrived at the scene.

While Elliott went to the emergency room at River Region Medical Center to get stitched up, the officers put the alligator in Clear Creek.

“It wasn’t quite his exact habitat, but it’s better than the highway,” Gross said.

They’re still not sure how the alligator got in the road and where it had been living, Gross said.

There are more alligators these days, Gross said, and that means people have more contact with them.

“The population of the alligators is increasing a little bit. With that comes people trying to handle them,” he said, and that is not something Gross endorses.

“Don’t try to do anything with them. Give us a call. We have trappers who are trained to handle them. If you’re not trained in handling them, you can get injured real quick,” Gross said.

Alligators have strong historic ties to the Mississippi River and the Southeast. The reptile’s scientific name, Alligator mississippiensis, means “of the Mississippi.” It has several common names, one of which is “Mississippi alligator.”

While the species was threatened in the early and middle parts of the 20th century because its skin was highly prized by poachers, it has staged a comeback since conservation efforts began in the late 1960s, a University of Florida study shows.

American alligators are found almost exclusively in the Southeast, stretching from Texas to Florida – and, sometimes, on Tiffentown Road.