Police respond to alligator at the beach, but it wasn’t done swimming

Sharon Martin and Nancy Thompson were walking their dogs on the beach Monday evening when the longtime beach residents saw a sight they hadn’t seen before… an alligator emerging from the surf.

“We were doing our daily walk. We had come down off of 38th (Avenue North) and we hit about 43rd Avenue, looked up and there was an alligator walking out of the ocean,” Martin said. It “stopped and just kind of sat there.”

She estimated the alligator was about three- or four-feet long.

“It was pretty frightening to see an alligator coming out of the ocean,” Martin said.

She and Thompson said seeing a beach-bound gator was a first.

“We called 911 and we waited until they all got here to try to catch it,” Martin said.

But then, after soaking up some sun, the alligator turned to the waves and high-stepped back into the surf.

A crowd of onlookers watched the alligator swim along the shoreline until officers lost sight of the reptile in the breaking waves. But 40 minutes later the alligator had yet to return ashore from his evening swim.

This story was originally published August 15, 2016 at 9:31 PM with the headline "Police respond to alligator at the beach, but it wasn’t done swimming."