Frank Folsom, a cabbie in Augusta, Maine, picked up a passenger Tuesday who was also carrying some unexpected cargo: five baby alligators. 

The alligators were in an open box, but somewhere along the ride they escaped, crawling about the car and, at one point, biting Folsom’s shirt. 

Folsom later stopped at a convenience store to get a closed box for the tiny beasts, which is where they were stored when authorities seized them a short while later.

That’s because at some point during the trip, Folsom told the Kennebec Journal, someone—perhaps a convenience store worker—reported the alligators to police. 

When Folsom and his passenger (and the alligators’ owner), a 20-year-old college student named Yifan Sun, arrived at their destination, authorities were waiting. 

“These don’t belong in Maine,” one officer told Sun, according to the Journal. “I know the movie Lake Placid says otherwise, but these don’t belong in Maine.”

The officer was referring to the 1999 “monster horror comedy film,” as Wikipedia describes it, which stars a massive crocodile and takes place in Maine, not Lake Placid. 

Sun told authorities that he’d gotten the alligators from a friend, and had kept them for two months on a diet of water and dog food. He was charged with importing or possessing wildlife without a permit. The alligators are now in a nearby refuge.