The alligator that bit Scott Hollingsworth at his front door step has been euthanized (Picture: WOFL)

A man who heard a noise and opened his door thinking it was someone looking for his son got a painful surprise.

When the man, living on Champions Drive in Daytona Beach, Florida, opened his front door, a creature lunged at him and bit his upper thigh.

‘Went outside and didn’t turn the light on and just got a step outside and something grabbed me on the leg, started shaking violently,’ said the victim, Scott Hollingsworth, according to WESH.

Hollingsworth thought he had been attacked by a dog. But he later realized that it was an alligator he estimated to be ‘six or seven feet’ long.

‘I really didn’t get a good look at it. When I saw what it was, I stepped back in the house and closed the door,’ Hollingsworth said. ‘Looked down and I had a large gash in the side of my leg. I was trying to put pressure on it.’

Police who responded to the incident on Saturday night and Hollingsworth was transported to a hospital where underwent surgery.

‘Fortunately, there’s no damage to my knee, which I was concerned about,’ he said. ‘Everything’s going well.’

Florida Fish and Wildlife captured the gator that bit Hollingsworth and euthanized it. The reptile was closer to nine feet long, wildlife officials told his family.

Hollingsworth has had to put his plans to enjoy Daytona Bike Week on hold, acknowledging he ‘probably won’t be biking anytime soon’.

His family has seen alligators in the pond behind their home but it was the first encounter on their front step.

Hollingsworth told WKMG that he likes animals – ‘but not that close’.

‘It was a little too up-close-and-personal for me,’ he said.

The alligator bite happened less than two weeks after a gator killed a woman who was walking her dog at a retirement community in Fort Piece, Florida. A wildlife camera captured the terrifying moment that the gator emerged from the water toward the fleeing dog and pulled the 85-year-old woman underwater.