A 71-year-old Florida man miraculously survived an alligator attack by beating it with his fishing pole until the creature let go of his leg.
It all began as a typical Friday evening for James Grayson McMicken. He picked up his fishing pole, grabbed his bulldog, and walked to the canal behind his house in north Fort Myers, and cast a line. That’s when an alligator leaped out of the water and clamped down on his leg.
“I started reeling and it jumped out of the water and grabbed me,” McMicken told WPLG News. “He rolled me down off the bank into the water. I stuck my thumb in his eye and I just took that fishing pole and jabbed him in that other eye and jabbed him and jabbed him and jabbed him. It seemed like forever, but it wasn’t that long. But then he turned loose.
“I’ve always heard that if you got no other choice, hit them eyes. And that’s what got him off of me.”
McMicken said his bulldog being there helped him to survive the alligator attack.
“I’d have never made it crawling this far, so I called my dog over. She stood there and let me get up on her back to where I could get stood up,” he said.
After reaching his house, his wife cleaned his wounds, and he sat down in his chair “and passed out” from exhaustion. His family then took him to the hospital, where he felt like a bit of a celebrity.
“All the nurses on the floor had to come by and go, ‘Wow, you did what?’” he said. “I’m going to do everything I can not to die. No gator is going to run me off.”
WFTV News reports that as of July 2nd, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers and trappers had not found the alligator.
As for McMicken, he is back home recovering and plans to go back fishing as soon as he can. He will just be a little more careful when he approaches the water’s edge at night.