Man with alligator over his shoulder seen walking around Louisiana town, video shows

A man carrying a live alligator slung over his shoulder was seen walking the streets of a Louisiana city, and he was wearing only one shoe, observers noted.

The man, that is, not the alligator.

Driver Stevie Guin recorded the scene June 28 at the intersection of North Canal Boulevard and Glenwild Drive in Thibodaux, and his video has since been viewed over 741,000 times on Facebook as of July 3. Thibidaux is about 60 miles southwest of New Orleans.

“Caught this on my way back to work. One shoe… alligator on his shoulder,” Guin wrote. “Welcome to Thibodaux.”

The identity of the wanderer remains a mystery, but Guin suspects he plucked the gator from nearby Bayou Lafourche, WWL-TV reported.

“I started fumbling for my phone and I was like I have to capture this because no one is going to believe that I just saw this,” Guin told the station. “The blacktop can get hot right around noon and you could see he was kind of like limping.”

MoniqueAngel Washington reports she saw him, too, only the man was holding the alligator by its tail, like a sack.

She suspects someone called the cops, because she later saw him talking to Thibodaux police — minus the alligator, photos show.

“Now he is in the back of the police car and the alligator is with animal control,” she wrote on Facebook. “It was alive.”

Social media posts about the incident have gotten thousands of reactions and comments, and ignited a debate over whether the alligator was a pet or an intended dinner.

Most commenters offered jokes, however.

“Maybe the gator stole his shoe and he just wanted it back,” Sarah Savoie Armond wrote on Facebook.

“Or he was on the way to a cobbler to get some fancy ones made,” Artemis ClydeFrog said.

“This heat got (people) acting real funny,” Andre Smith posted.

This story was originally published July 3, 2023 at 7:19 AM with the headline "Man with alligator over his shoulder seen walking around Louisiana town, video shows."