Posted on 05/16/2006 12:06:05 PM PDT by dukeman
Manatee woman shoots gator as fatal assaults leave state shook up
EAST MANATEE -- An unprecedented surge in fatal alligator attacks has created a stir among Floridians, including a local woman who used a handgun to fend off a gator.
When a 3-foot alligator came onto Candy Frey's lanai Saturday and attacked her golden retriever, the East Manatee woman grabbed her pistol.
Frey and her daughter managed to push the alligator through a dog-door on their lanai, then Frey shot the reptile four times.
"I was running on so much adrenaline," recalled Frey, 48, a former U.S. Marine aviation technician who has lived in the Panther Ridge subdivision for four years. "I just freaked out and shot him -- boom, boom, boom, boom."
Frey said she was thinking about recent gator attacks when she got her gun.
"People are shook up," said Todd Hardwick, a trapper who captured a 9-foot, 4-inch alligator Monday in a residential lake north of Miami. "It's like the citizens of Florida have declared war on alligators. People are really going crazy."
Last week, a 74-year-old woman in Punta Gorda fended off an alligator with a garden hose after it bit her ankle. The alligator scurried off.
In the latest fatal cases, one victim was a jogger whose body was found in a Broward County canal; one was snorkeling in a recreation area near Lake George, in the central part of the state; another was found in a canal about 20 miles north of St. Petersburg. All three were women.
"These are unfortunate, unrelated coincidences," Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Willie Puz said.
Although such a concentration of deaths -- all in a week's time -- had never been recorded in Florida, wildlife officials say there is no pattern or common element between them.
Only 17 deaths had been recorded since 1948 before the most recent fatal attacks, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Government researchers estimate there are between 1 million and 2 million alligators in Florida, but there have only been 351 recorded attacks on humans in the past 58 years.
Those gators that are 6-foot or larger are most likely to attack a person; alligators can reach 14 feet in length and weigh 1,000 pounds.
"We still caution everyone: Pay attention to your surroundings. Pay attention to what's in the water. Alligators are predators and wild animals that should be treated with respect," Puz said.
The three fatal attacks have come during the peak of alligator mating season, when the animals are moving around in search of mates.
In populous south and southwest Florida, lack of rainfall has dried up some shallow wetlands, forcing more alligators to find new homes. And rising spring temperatures make the cold-blooded creatures more active in their search for food.
Alligator encounters with humans also could increase as more and more natural habitat is lost to development. "We are building more and more into wild territories," Puz said.
Frey said Monday she's seen an alligator once before in the 15-acre lake behind her home in Panther Ridge.
A metal fence with bars surrounds her property. She said she thought the fence's height and metal bars would be alligator-proof.
But at about 5:45 p.m. Saturday, Frey was in the front of her house when she heard her two golden retrievers, Sammy and Annie, frantically barking.
"The dogs were going nuts," she said.
Sammy was bleeding from his head when Frey walked onto her lanai.
"I have to take this guy out," Frey recalled thinking. "You can't wait to see how long it's going to sit there."
She loaded a 10-round magazine into her pistol and marched back outside. Frey had tried flipping the gator away with a shovel but the reptile kept lunging at her.
Gripping the gun with two hands, Frey squeezed the trigger four times. The shots hit their mark -- two in the alligator's neck and two in its shoulder.
The gator barely bled, she said.
A neighbor called 911 and a Manatee County sheriff's deputy responded to Frey's home in 8100 block of Panther Ridge Trail.
The state sent a wildlife officer to investigate.
Frey said the gunshot wounds appeared to self-heal and the wildlife officer put the gator back in the lake.
The officer questioned Frey about the shooting.
Frey thought she was going to jail, but ended up with a warning citation for hunting without a permit.
In NJ a homeowner was heavily fined for shooting a bear that was breaking into his house.
Do you think we could open that up just a tad?
On top of that, the gator wasn't just on the woman's property. A lanai is a screen room, so technically the gator was in her house! It probably got in through a doggy door. Alligators are a protected species in FL and you can't mess with them in any way without getting in trouble with some government agency.
This gave me a great chuckle..:)
Thank heavens for guns!! LOL
Almost. To be more similar, the officer would have first gotten dental work for the alligator.
The gator population was in bad shape in the not too distant past, so the state restricted hunting them pretty severely. They've bounced back pretty well. We have a momma and 10 babies in the lake behind my house right now!
Well, they put in those regulations when I was young (1973), and I can tell you they've made a tremendous comeback. I think we could loosen up the regs a bit more.
One of the biggest problems I see, and I see tons of gators, is the folks see a gator and immediately start feeding it. Most gators are afraid of people, but when they start feeding them, they lose their fear and sometimes attack. As the sign says going into Yellowstone: "Please don't feed the bears!" Same applies to the gators.
The Adam Binford story still haunts me. My daughter was only two months old when it happened. He was playing with his dog while his family enjoyed a picnic. The mother heard a splash, saw the roiling water, but could do nothing. I couldn't sleep for days.
I don't want them hunted to extinction -- they're part of living in Florida. But I do think we need to consider making "harvesting" a bit easier.
The three fatal attacks have come during the peak of alligator mating season, when the animals are moving around in search of mates.
It's a jungle out there.
Please note that the combat booted fascists in the green suits accused her of hunting when they released the wounded gator. By definition, if the gator is wounded, and has already been a "nuisance gator" the GangGreen Persons should have killed the gator on the spot.
Note GangGreen has taught the gator that it can survive attacking away from the water and around a home. Smooth Move, Bowels!
On the other hand, one has to ask why the home owner/dog owner didn't finish the gator off earlier. Gun control does mean hitting one's target. Hopefully, the wounded gator is now being digested by a larger gator.
Gators are kept on teh "species of special concern" list so that the agency can be grown. Protection of the citizens is not on the agency agenda; sucking up to the animal rights movement is.
Given that keeping citizens from carrying a gun on all state lands has effectively removed the citizen;s right to defend themselves against the state's predators, it must therefore be assumed that the agencies place mere reptiles as equally as important as humans.
After all, did not the enviro-commies in the animal rights whacko crowd say that "a bug is a rat is a boy"? The agencies have all too many AgencyPersons who share that warped view. Florida must allow citizens to carry arms on all state lands, parks, preserves, and canal banks.
Yes, Virginia, they will occasionally kill an animal. Better a mere animal than a human.
'Twill be a far, far better thing that they will do than
they have been yet been allowed to do."
My apologies to Charles Dickens
We have more in common than I thought.
susie
The first entry from your list, the attack in Oscar Scherer State Park, is the one I was referring to in one of my earlier posts in this thread. I incorrectly remembered the victim as a smaller child. It was a scary story around here.
"Frey said the gunshot wounds appeared to self-heal and the wildlife officer put the gator back in the lake. "
Ah, yes! The Possum Police as veterinarian. Amazing how much wisdom strapping on a gun gives Ossifer Friendly, isn't it?
And in case anyone has any confidence in the utterances of even a real veterinarian who is paid by an agency, consider that we found actual capture reports which prove that the entire panther capture team could not correctly sex a captured and sedated panther.
That's right, they thought a male was a female! Neither the "Project Leader", one Deborah Jansen, nor the Vet, Dr. Blankenship, spotted the mistake. Neither did the rest of their 'capture team'. Ask the FWCC for copies of the capture records of Florida panthers number 124, 125, & 126; then you can see for yourself.
If AgencyPerson "professionals" can't correctly determine the gender of a captured and sedated cat, can we rely on other things they say?
I would be mad as heck that he put the gator back in a POND.. One that had gone into a residental area and attackt someones dog. Maybe it will attack a child next time. Thing needed to be shot.
A socialist somewhere is saying, "Send GATORAIDE!"
I don't know...my son suggested that an alligator on our property would be a definite reason for invoking the "shoot, shovel and shut up" clause. Of course, we don't have too much to worry about being a good distance from any sizable body of water. It would be pretty shocking to find a gator in our yard.
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