‘He wanted a new look’: Alligator seen strolling outside Florida hair salon

Since alligators are hairless, you can imagine the surprise of patrons at a Florida beauty salon when they saw one strolling up to the door on Tuesday.

A post on the Port Richey Police Department’s Facebook page shows a picture of the little guy on the sidewalk outside the strip mall spot.

“On 04-30-2019 an unexpected guest showed up at Hair Obsessions Salon in Port Richey. However, the guest was not there for a haircut or color,” read the department’s caption. “The gator left his home and wandered up to surrounding businesses.”

Officers assisted the gator in getting back to his home, a retention pond. But before it was wrangled, the gator took temporary residence under a few parked cars.

Facebook commenters saw the humor in the potentially dangerous situation.

“Maybe it just needed a deep conditioning,” wrote one jokester.

“He wanted a new look,” wrote another.

“Maybe the gator just wanted to see how much it’d be to get some beach waves and highlights for the summer.”

“Was she looking for a manicure?”

In all seriousness, some people were duly concerned at the unusual sight.

The salon’s owner, Maria Richards, told the Orlando Sentinel that a frantic passerby called her to alert her to the reptile’s presence and she was “a little scared.”

“I look outside and I see the lady driving away and there’s the alligator!” Richards told the newspaper. “It was tiny, but it looked big in person. Big enough.”

This story was originally published May 3, 2019 at 5:08 PM.