Southport alligator walks into bagel shop and waits at the counter like a customer
A 3-foot alligator wandered through the open back door of a bagel shop in Southport, North Carolina, dashed through the kitchen and stood at the front counter as if waiting to order – sending the owner scrambling for a chair.
Most bagel shops expect the odd early-bird customer. Bagel Dock Express in Southport, North Carolina, got one with scales.
At around 4:30pm last Thursday (29 October), with the shop closed to customers, a 3-foot young alligator crawled in through the open back door. Surveillance video shows it marching in with confidence, sprinting through the kitchen and stopping at the front counter – as if waiting for someone to take its order. “Just walked in like he knew where to go,” the shop wrote on social media.
Southport Waterfront Park, Southport, North Carolina (2023) – not from the day. Photo: DiscoA340 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).
Owner Jesse Driscoll was nearby the whole time but busy installing a new oven. When he rounded a corner, the video shows him stop dead, hop across the lobby and grab a chair, like a lion tamer, before dialling 911. The gator, equally startled, backed away looking for a way out.
AI illustration – not the real owner or alligator. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
“It’s just so far out of the ordinary for a bagel shop,” Driscoll told WWAY. “Never in a million years did I think I’d see an alligator.”
Southport Police called in Officer Katie Ward of Animal Protective Services, who caught the gator and took it to a wilderness area. It wasn’t happy about it, but nobody was hurt.
AI illustration – an imagined scene, not the real officer or alligator.
The shop took it in good humour: “Apparently, word of our fresh bagels has made its way into the swamp!” it posted on Facebook. “No injuries, no drama … just one very unusual customer! Fresh bagels. Wild experiences.”
Local police are no strangers to gator call-outs: earlier this year a 12-foot alligator turned up at a Southport woman’s door, and an 8-foot one was caught at a bank drive-thru.
Reported by The News & Observer (Mark Price) and WWAY TV3.
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