A 61-year-old man was walking his dog along a canal near his Florida home Sunday morning when an alligator chomped down on the back of his knee and attempted to drag him into the water.
Mark Johnson of Port St. Lucie had noticed the alligator swimming toward them and ordered his golden retriever, Rex, to return home, and it did. As he stepped onto the mud bank, Johnson got his Croc sandal stuck in the mud and the alligator lunged at him, TCPalm reported.
“I’m still in disbelief that the gator lunged at me like he did,” Johnson told the Miami Herald Wednesday. “I’m a native Floridian, been around these things my whole life, and this would have been the last thing I would ever expected.”
The force knocked Johnson to the ground where he knew it futile to attempt to pry the jaws off his leg, but he had to act quickly before the gator tried a “death roll” designed to disable or kill, so he poked his index fingers into the alligator’s eyeballs.
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The alligator immediately let go and swam away, leaving Johnson with 12 puncture wounds; TCPalm posted photos of them. He limped 75 yards back home where his wife helped him into the shower to clean out the wounds and then wrapped a clean towel around them.
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At St. Lucie Medical Center, Johnson received about 60 stitches to his leg and another five in his left index finger, which was cut in the alligator’s eye socket.
Johnson told TCPalm he didn’t blame the alligator, as it was doing what alligators do. “But it’s important for people to understand how dangerous alligators are. If I had been a small child or pet, I wouldn’t have had a chance.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sent a nuisance trapper to the scene, but he couldn’t locate the alligator.
“The trapper did tell me I was lucky,” Johnson told TCPalm. “He said the fingers to the eye socket trick doesn’t always work.”
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.