Shelly Davis noticed the crows in the Russian olive tree outside her west Lawrence house were acting especially rowdy Tuesday afternoon.

When she walked out into her front yard, she realized why.

A short distance from the tree was a toothy, nearly 3-foot long reptile – an alligator, crocodile or perhaps a caiman. It was standing still as stone.

“I thought, ‘Oh, no way,'” Davis said later. “I wondered if someone was playing a trick on me. Then I thought, ‘Oh, it looks too real.'”

Davis, who operates a day care business in her home in the 1300 block of Wagon Wheel Road, said she hated to leave the animal unwatched but went back inside to make sure about a half-dozen children didn’t go outside. Then she alerted neighbors and called her husband and animal control officers.

A 30-inch caiman, snared by officers from Animal Control, was found on the lawn at 1311 Wagon Wheel Drive, where a day care operates.

“I didn’t want to take my eyes off of it because I was worried it might get into our pond, or be hidden in the garden for me to find later,” Davis said.

A few minutes later, Lawrence police, firefighters, animal control officers and a few neighbors were in her front yard ogling the visiting beast. While a neighbor snapped pictures and the children stood a safe distance away, animal control officers struggled to get the reptile into a cage.

“It put up a little snapping struggle,” Davis said.

Police Capt. Ed Brunt watched and shook his head in amazement.

• 6News video: Caiman caught near day care

“I thought, at least before I retire, I’ve got to see an alligator,” Brunt said. “This is the first time in my 27-year career I’ve seen anything like this.”

Chances are, however, it was a caiman, not an alligator, said Justin Koehn, a Kansas Department of Wildlife officer who also arrived at the scene. Koehn said he wasn’t an expert on these types of reptiles, but its head and eyes, he thought, were similar to a caiman, which is a relative of the crocodile.

Shelly Davis holds back children in her day care from left, Raegan Godley, 4, Kitty Tootle, 11, Olivia Rice, 4, Aubin Murphy, 5, and Kate Rettig, 6, as they look at the captured caiman found on Davis' lawn Tuesday at 1311 Wagon Wheel Drive.

Neither Koehn or other officers at the scene had any idea how the caiman might have gotten in the Davis’ front yard. It’s possible someone got it as a pet when it was much smaller and then decided it had grown too big and turned it loose, they said. It is illegal to have a caiman or alligator-type animal as a pet in Lawrence city limits, police spokesman Sgt. Dan Ward said.

An animal control officer now has custody of the caiman and it will be kept for observation at a location outside the city limits for three days, Ward said. If somebody wants to claim it, they can call animal control. If it goes unclaimed, efforts will be made to place it in a facility such as a zoo that can handle such animals, Ward said.

Davis was just glad to have it out of her yard.

“I hope it was the only one,” she said. “I think I’ve lost my fear of snakes.”