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A really bad day for an unfortunate cyclist in Stuart Florida. This guy was riding his bike along a bike path when he had a sudden tire blow out. This caused him to careen off the path, fall off his bike, and roll down an embankment into a pond........ where a 12ft alligator happened to be lying in wait. The gator took 3 bites at the poor guys thighs and pelvis before he manged to get free. He was taken to hospital in serious condition, but is now doing OK.
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Exercise can be so bad for you......... -
A few years ago we had a similar bicycle/wildlife event where I work.
A man was standing with his bike at a stop sign and a car was going through the intersection. At that instant a deer ran across the intersection, bounced off the car, flew through the air, and knocked the man and his bike to the ground. The man was superficially injured and soon recovered and the deer got back on his feet and ran off. I'm thinking the car spent a couple of days at the body and fender place. (The bike was fine!)
Being that we are a Federal facility, a committee met and filled out all sorts of paperwork. When they got down to "actions to prevent repeat incidents", they were kind of stumped!
-I mean: what are the odds?!Comment
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There's probably an alligator internet forum that has a new topic with the title "A really good day in Florida".Comment
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Oh, SNAP!!!!
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You guys! So terrible! (Snicker)!Comment
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Jeepers.... Florida sounds a dangerous place to go biking, glad he survived.Comment
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Years and years ago canoeing friends of mine went down to the Great Okefenokee Swamp and camped overnight on a tenting platform.
-all night long 'gators brushed past underneath...
It's hard to imagine a worse night's sleep!
-basically sharks with legs!Comment
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Steve's story reminds me of two personal experiences with Gators. The first time I went fishing in Florida was at Lake Tohopeckaliga , just south of Orlando. I had been persuaded by a couple of guys at work to do a night fishing jaunt on a large pontoon boat, basically a raft with a couple of air tanks to keep it afloat. Soon after dark we started fishing, and one guy shone a flashlight out onto the water, I am not kidding, all we saw were pairs of eyes staring back at us! That was the last time I went Lake Fishing in Florida!
Gators in Florida were almost hunted to extinction, but are now a protected species and have repopulated the whole state. People don't realize how fast these creatures can move, it is impossible to outrun them over a short distance.
In the 1990's we were staying in a house rental on Sanibel Island, off the coast from Fort Myers. We took our little Pekingese dog with us. One evening we returned to the house from the beach and I leashed up the Peke to take her for a walk as she had been inside all afternoon. We were walking in the grass behind the house when suddenly a large gator (I estimated it to be about 10-12 ft long) reared up out of the grass and came charging at us. It moved so fast that you just froze for a second or two, not knowing which way to run. For some reason it changed course and raced past us just a few feet away. We returned to the house and I noticed large claw-pattern foot prints all around the perimeter of the house!
After I found out that we were staying in a place right across the road from a wild life preserve, which is heavily populated with gators and salt water crocodiles, we re-located to a safer place inside the town of Sanibel.
A couple of years ago a 6 year old boy was snatched up and killed by a gator at Disneyworld in Orlando. Disney have since instituted a daily monitoring of gators at the resort, and any found are " relocated".
Maybe David Baker can print up a S8 horror film about gators!
Last edited by Paul Adsett; July 23, 2021, 10:01 AM.Comment
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These stories ... What a crock! Haha! Get it? Crock ... Croc? Haha ha ... Ha ...... Ehem
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Yep, Yep!
-tell you another 'gator story!
This lives in Klare Family Legend: how we remember our Patriarch: he who braved steerage and maybe even sneaked under a rope on Ellis Island to bring us to these shores. (AD 1923)
Grandpa wasn't always the sharpest knife in the drawer! It wasn't that he was completely stupid, he just had an uncanny ability to shift the sense he had into Neutral and just coast into unfortunate situations!
Just before his 66th Birthday, we had the most monumental snowstorm I have witnessed in the 52 years since. It was so bad that the County sacrificed plowing the local streets and focused on the main roads. We lost use of our cars for about a week: couldn't even see them under the drifts. The four of us walked, freezing our butts off in a narrow trench a mile up to the bus and rode 5 miles to Grandpa's birthday party. My aunt, uncle and cousins were too far away: they couldn't make it. That night Grandpa resolved to never have snow on his birthday again: he was moving to Florida! (Grandma didn't know until that moment either!)
-fast forward a few years, Mom and Dad have driven the 1,100 miles to visit and they are going out to dinner at a very elegant old restaurant with a grand lawn next to a lake. They are having cocktails out on that lawn when Grandpa spotted an alligator lounging in the shallows. He did what anybody with less than an ounce of sense might do: picked up a stick and started poking it!
It often comes up how fast a 'gator can run on dry land. Based on this story, I can give you at least a comparative answer to that.
-at least over maybe 50 feet, just slightly slower than a 70-ish year old man on full adrenaline running for his life!
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That image alone is worth the price of admission! I was never attacked by a Croc, but I was attacked by an apparently rabid or at least, highly pissed off desert lizard which, when it got fed up with curious lil Osi, chose to latch itself to Osis nose for a little less than a minute, lil Osi running around in circles, screaming like a little girl, well, I was 8 years old.Comment
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