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A Florida fisherman is in the hospital after a large alligator bit his hand near a golf course pond over the weekend.
The man, who has not been named, was reeling in a fish from a pond in Leesburg, Lake County, when the nine-foot alligator bit him on Sunday.
The survivor was on the ground when the alligator “grabbed the man by the arm”, said witness Ron Priest, describing the attack.
The alligator lunged at the man, opened its jaws, and cut off his hand, Mr. Priest told FOX 35. “The gator was chasing. [the] fish, and what we don’t know is if the man is trying to remove the fish,” he said.
Following the attack, the crocodile swam back into the water without the fish, leaving the bloody man writhing in pain.
Mr Priest’s wife was one of two witnesses to the animal attack who called 911 for help. In the calls released by Lake County Fire Rescue officials, the caller can be heard asking for immediate help in a panicked voice.
“There’s a gator attacking a guy in my backyard!” shouted a caller on the phone, according to FOX35. “Some people today stopped their golf carts!”
The caller informed the dispatcher that the man was walking around with blood on his hands and “continually moaning and groaning”.
A medical helicopter was rushed to the scene and the injured was transported to an Orlando hospital.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) said the fisherman suffered injuries to his hand and wrist. It added that an officer from the commission responded to the scene and removed the “nuisance gator” following protocol.
“The odds of a Florida resident being seriously injured during an unprovoked alligator incident in Florida is approximately one in 3.1 million,” the commission said in a human alligator incident fact sheet.
These types of tragedies are not uncommon in Florida but they are also not as widespread as one might believe, the commission said. The FWC estimates that the state is home to about 1.3m alligators of all sizes across its 67 counties, offering about 6.7m acres of suitable wetland habitat for the animals.
The commission has been keeping a record of “unscored bite incidents” since 1948 and reported that, between that date and November 2021, there were only 442. Only 26 of those resulted in human death. .
