Posted on 09/16/2007 6:11:13 PM PDT by The Game Hen
Eww. I think I’m gonna lose it.....
I used to live in Florida in the 70s and swam frequently in lakes with the alligators. As you say, humans did the deed, now days, every tourist along route 41 and 27 will stop and feed the alligators. I am sure it’s the same in other areas of the state. It’s no longer safe to take them for granted, they equate people with food. Stay away from them ‘gators.
Let’s see, the movie is too old for you to be calling the kid a boob and Rock Hudson wasn’t a cannibal . . .
It appears the gator took his whole left arm from the shoulder. This is one case where it’ll be a blessing if he’s right handed.
http://www.charleston.net/news/2007/sep/17/doctors_cant_reattach_limb_severed_gator_attack/
Doctors can’t reattach limb severed in gator attack
Monday, September 17, 2007
MONCKS CORNER — Doctors were unable to reattach the arm of a man who was attacked by an 11-foot, 10-inch alligator Sunday, a family member told The Post and Courier today.
The family member said Bill Hedden, a retired master chief with the U.S. Navy, is in good spirits despite the injury, and if anyone can overcome it, he can.
Hedden, 59, of Summerville is still listed in critical condition at the Medical University of South Carolina.
That lil’ feller sure has a disarming smile.
Last night’s good news turned bad. Prayers for the man.
I saw a documentary recently that said an alligator has a brain the size of a golf ball. They don’t have enough brain to have any reasoning abilities the way most animals do. They can’t be trained. If people feed them they automatically associate people with food and they can’t separate the two.
Tenn has gators? Memphis?
*shrug* He is now...
If he wasn’t right handed recovery will be more difficult, both physically and psychologically.
Knoxville, University of Tenn. Volunteers. Florida Gators smashed them this past weekend. College football joke.
Oh, clueless me. You actually had me going, because it can be hot and swampy in Memphis. With this story in Chahston, it’s only four hours from the Blue Ridge.
Sorry! It sure can be hot and swampy in Memphis. Although I’d worry more about the politicians in Memphis than the wildlife.
Yes that’s true. The only way to kill them is to hit the golf ball — Preferably a short barreled 12 ga. Hitting them elsewhere will likely only make them really mad. If you are close enough, that will not end in a happy dance. The tourists have associated food with humans, and that’s developed the current risk. An alligator that does not back off when a human moves towards them means big trouble.
Locally they have been known to bump people in kayaks. Local golf course lakes have become a haunt for alligators that have been trained to come to the human for food. Both scenarios have caused fear and calls to the wildlife officers to rid the local lakes of them — Probably not possible to do.
Have you heard of the death roll? That is where the gator or croc spins its prey, an arm in this case, until it twists off in nice to swallow chuncks.
My grandfather killed every gator he found on his property because they caught and ate his hogs and calves when they came to the creek for water. He would bait a big steel hook with a rotten chicken carcass and attach it to a short length of chain and a strong rope. Within a day or two the gator would be hooked and he would use a horse to drag it out of it's creekbank cave and then kill it with an axe.
I used to keep baby gators in a washtub in our back yard as pets when I was a young kid in the 1940s, but now I would kill every one of them if I could. I know the conservationists say that gators are necessary to keep the balance of nature, but I would rather man be the the top rank predator than have the gator hold that position. I can't imagine a fate much worse than being caught and drowned by a gator, and that is happening way too often now that gators have been protected by law for so many years and are as common as cats and dogs in many areas of FL, extreme south GA, and other southern coastal states. If the yankee tourists want to see gators they can see them at places like Gatorland in Big Cypress Swamp.
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