A man in Florida had his arm torn off by an alligator and lived to tell the tale.
Nearly two months ago, on July 17, Eric Merda got lost in the woods at Lake Manatee Fish Camp in Myakka City, Fla.
Rather than walk around the lake, he opted to swim across.
“Not the smartest decision a Florida boy could make,” Merda told WTSP.
“I looked over and there’s a gator on my right-hand side so I went to swim and she got my forearm so I grabbed her,” he recalled. “She was trying to roll but she snapped her head so my arm went backward completely.”
Merda recounted how the gator dragged him under water three times.
“She’s already got my arm, so when we came up the third time, she finally did a death roll and took off with my arm.”
Merda managed to get free but then spent the next three days trying to find his way out of the swampy woods.
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“You can’t see anything,” he said. “Sometimes I felt like I was walking in circles, I didn’t know.”
He eventually started “following the sun and power lines,” before he came across a fence with a man on the other side who helped him after learning of his horrific ordeal.
Merda admitted he’s still adapting to life without his arm but he still had some gator advice.
“Do not feed the gators alright, you guys know who you are,” he told the outlet. “Throwing rocks at them and stuff, I’ve seen it on the job sites, leave them gators alone.”
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