Miss Fidget.com

What a brave, and sorta cute, dude. I am sorry he lost his arm, but glad he saved his own life. Great work on fighting the gator, in the dark, in the water. Get better soon Kasey! I hope you can sell your story for a fortune. I hope you had health insurance.

Alligators are dangerous and will bite humans. For more Miss Fidget posts on man vs alligator stories see here, here, here and here.

Okeechobee teen recovers from gator attack
Eye poke frees man from jaws
BY KAUSTUV BASU | www.floridatoday.com | June 25, 2008

Kasey Edwards looked into the eyes of the big, sturdy alligator and started praying.

“I touched him. He felt like a rock,” Edwards said.

The 18-year-old had jumped into Nubbin Slough, a canal near Lake Okeechobee about 2:30 a.m. Sunday, to replicate a high school stunt. Seconds later, he felt as if a giant pair of pliers had clamped down on his left arm.

A 111/2 foot alligator had grabbed his hand and was trying to drag him to the bottom of the 25-foot canal. The reptile tried to twist him around.

“The death roll,” the construction worker thought.

Edwards grabbed on to a buoy line. He then poked the alligator’s eye.

The alligator let go. Edwards tried to swim ashore to his frantic friends. He could not.

What had been his left arm minutes prior was a jagged piece of flesh. He paddled painfully towards the bank with his right arm.

The Okeechobee resident, now recuperating at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, lost his left arm from above the elbow in the early morning tussle.

“It could have been worse. I was staring at death,” Edwards said.

Between 1948 and August, 2004, 376 cases of alligator attacks were reported in the country, according to the Wilderness and Environmental Medicine journal. Florida accounted for 334 of them, including 14 fatalities.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 17 deaths due to alligator attacks have been reported in Florida since 1948.

“I am lucky,” he said.

At the hospital Tuesday, Edwards said that he feels that his left arm is asleep. “I feel like I’m going to see it any moment,” he said.

His mother, Kim Edwards, said she was proud of her son. “It is a miracle. God is with us,” she said.

His friends have let him know that the alligator has been trapped and destroyed.

According to an Associated Press report about the incident, witnesses reportedly tried to persuade Edwards not to get into the canal. The report also attributes a witness as telling the Okeechobee County Sheriff’s Office that Edwards may have been impaired.

Edwards said Tuesday he had a few drinks much earlier but was not under the influence at the time of the incident.

“There is no way I could have fought the alligator off if I was drunk,” he said.