FRIPP ISLAND, S.C. — An alligator that frequents a South Carolina golf resort is known as King Arthur. But the crown he was wearing was anything but regal.

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The 11-foot reptile had a cage on its head that resembled a metal baseball cap, The State newspaper of Columbia reported. Staff members at the Fripp Island Golf & Beach Resort, about 50 miles north of Savannah, Georgia, contacted the University of Georgia’s Coastal Ecology Lab.

“After talking with them and looking at the pictures they sent, it appeared that this alligator had somehow gotten a tomato cage stuck over his head!” the lab wrote in a Facebook post on Monday. “In situations like this, it is very tempting to want to jump in and immediately help by removing whatever is stuck on the animal. That is not always the best thing to do, as oftentimes the animal can get free.”

It took some time, but the metal strips surrounding King Arthur’s head began to break apart within two days after the lab received the call.

“However, it was still attached fairly tightly around his neck,” the lab wrote on Facebook. “We waited another couple of days, but it did not seem like he had made any more progress, and other things were starting to get caught in the cage.

“We were worried that he would get stuck on something underwater and drown if he could not get free. For those reasons, we decided human intervention was necessary.”

The lab sent a capture team to work with the resort’s head naturalist, Colleen Goff, to catch King Arthur, The State reported. After several attempts, the crew caught the large reptile and removed the cage.

“While we do not know how he got his head stuck in a tomato cage, our best guess is that the cage ended up in the water, washed into a pipe, and that when the alligator swam through the pipe he also swam into the tomato cage,” the lab wrote on Facebook. “This is an excellent example of why it is so important to properly dispose of your trash. This is just one of many examples where an animal has had complications because of trash that was improperly disposed of.”

On its Facebook page, Fripp Island Golf & Beach Resort expressed gratitude and relief that King Arthur was safe.

The big gator has been at the resort at least since 2018, according to the Island Packet. Officials believe he is at least 40 years old and has “likely lived on Fripp his whole life.”

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