A Tampa, Florida man recently came face to face with an angry alligator recently… underwater.
He’s alive, but he will be scarred for life… literally.
According to ABC News, Jeffrey Heim was diving in the Myakka River in Sarasota County, looking for sharks teeth on the river bottom when he came face to face with the last thing you want to see while under water in Florida, well besides maybe a shark. An angry alligator.
The man said the gator attacked so quickly and with such force that it felt like a boat propeller had hit him in the head. The gator bit him twice, once on the top of the head and once on the arm.
He suffered a skull fracture and had to get patched up with 34 staples.
“I thought I got hit by a propeller… It hit me so fast it felt like a boat was going 50 mph.”
The bite victim knows he’s lucky to be alive as the bite force from a gator the size of the one that got him is enough to be fatal.
“Because of the bite force on those animals, he could have got me anywhere else and I would have died.”
And now, Heim is just happy to be alive.
“I’ve never cried so much in my life. And not from the pain, just from the realization of what I’ve gone through and how I was literally an inch away from death.”
Aggressive Gators
The Florida Department of Fish and Wildlife issued a statement about the attack saying that because its mating season, it’s a risky time to be diving because alligators are more active and aggressive than usual in May and June.
However, according to The Waterboy, the gator may have been ornery and attacked because it has all them teeth but no toothbrush.
