Yup, thats a totem pole and trust me, it’s in New Jersey. Miss Fidget found it on a recent jaunt and those, it’s a a found photo. The pole is located off Broadway in Westville, New Jersey. In order to preserve the peace of the nice red brick dwelling home and pole owner, I won’t tell ya the street name. HINT: Think state flower of neighboring state. I plan on going back for better pics later this year.
Sweet story, and who knew seagulls were in Minnesota?
anonymous ring bill gull and a krispy kreme doughnut
Seagull Returns To Duluth Looking For Doughnut
Mar 28, 2008 | wcco.com/local/
DULUTH, Minn. (AP) ― Steven Seagull has returned to the Super 8 motel in Duluth, Minn., looking for his customary cake doughnut.
Year after year, the ring-billed gull has tapped at the lobby’s front door until a staff member gives him the doughnut, said general manager Jodi Chambers.
“If it’s quiet in the lobby, you can hear him tapping on it,” Chambers said. “But if we’re busy, he starts squawking like crazy.”
Steven returned Wednesday.
Chambers said she’s sure it’s the same bird because he behaves the same way every year. For one thing, Steven chases away other gulls looking for his food.
“We don’t feed them if there’s more than one, and he’s figured that out,” Chambers said.
Leslie Larsen, the education director of the Lake Superior Zoo, said Steven Seagull has learned to respond to positive reinforcement.
“What I do know is that animals, they don’t necessarily have to be intelligent to respond to what we call operant conditioning,” she said. “Without knowing it or meaning to, they’ve trained that gull. They’ve given him a positive consequence to come back.”
Whatever the reason, Chambers said Steven is a hit. “The guests love it,” she said. “I’ve had a few come in and say ‘We came to check out your bird.”‘
Warning, this is not a funny, odd or lighthearted story. It’s grim as grime and deals with the deep links between poverty, religion, and child trafficking. It seems improbable in the digital age that to pay for VooDoo Initiation children are sold to quarries and die “breaking rocks in the hot sun” but its true.
In the developed world many families sacrifice and scrimp to ensure their children receiver a “Proper” religious education that is often inferior to the secular one available for free, hardly the same as slavery though.
The above photo from redcross.org is captioned “In Benin, children wait in line to receive a measles vaccination.” If only half the money Americans and Westerners spend on animal charities went to help children…. OOh humanity oh humanity.
Children in voodoo’s power
This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday March 30 2008 on p42 of the World news section. It was last updated at 00:00 on March 30 2008 | James Brabazon and Evan Williams in Djejbe
Initiation ceremonies are ripping poor families in Benin apart and driving parents into despair and bankruptcy
In the tiny West African country of Benin, voodoo has been practised for 10,000 years, but efforts to preserve its ancient oral traditions are exacting a harsh toll on its faithful, splitting families and pushing people deeper into poverty.
Benin is unique in recognising voodoo as an official religion, followed by two-thirds of its 7.6 million people. It involves a pantheon of gods and spirits whose intercession is sought through animal blood sacrifice. But to survive, voodoo needs a new generation to pass on sacred mysteries, so thousands of children are initiated by its priests every year. But the price of the ceremonies can be unbearable and some parents are selling their children to repay voodoo debts.
In the village of Djejbe, a nine-year-old girl shuffles, head down, issuing guttural chants. Stripped to the waist she stares at the earth scoured by her naked feet as she emerges into the courtyard of the ‘voodoo convent’ of Do Pa Tohizanli, one of many institutions for initiating children into the voodoo mysteries.
Thomas Azanaai, author of a report into the convent system, estimates that there are thousands of such convents. While at Do Pa Tohizanli this girl is ‘dead’ and has no name. Once initiated, she will be reborn and renamed once. Her mother, Adonosi Kpamegan, watches nervously. She cannot approach her daughter, who ends her song and prostrates herself before the high priest. It is forbidden for parents to have any communication with their children while they undergo initiation, a process, the priest says, that could take three months, but often lasts more than three years.
After five miscarriages, Kpamegan went to her priest 12 years ago to seek help having a child. He performed a fertility ritual for free, the Faustian bargain being that if she had a child she would bring it to the convent. But when her daughter was born, Kpamegan had no money to pay for an initiation so, she claims, they took the baby by force, only giving her back after she agreed to save the money and surrender her child later. Nine years on, she still had not saved enough. ‘Then, voodoo took my daughter,’ she says. ‘She was possessed and ran screaming out of my house to the convent.’
The ceremonies will cost around £200, a fortune in a country where over half the population live on less than £1 a day. Kpamegan earns 12p a day as a firewood collector; her husband is unemployed.
The high priest denies enriching himself at the expense of the poor. ‘The money does not come to me,’ he insists. All the money, he claims, is used to buy goats and chickens and other ceremonial ingredients. The concept of reducing the cost of the sacrifices is laughable. ‘When voodoo demands something of you, you cannot deny it.’ Gap-toothed and elderly, he is unable to see a way forward, or even that there might be a problem.
Benin’s poverty has been caused by factors including arid soil, over-population and disastrous financial management in 17 years up to 1990 when it was a Marxist dictatorship. At best, voodoo ceremonies strain the resources of rural communities who traditionally bartered goods, not cash, for rituals. At worst, it bankrupts and splits families, forcing them deeper into debt and destitution.
One way to mitigate the worst effects of poverty is to sell children, giving them up in lieu of the costs of initiation and other ceremonies. Other parents send their children to work as domestic servants or labourers in conditions that Souleymane Diallo, the UN Children’s Education Fund representative in Benin, describes as ‘a form of modern slavery’.
Diallo believes many families will pay for initiation debts by selling one or more children into bonded labour. Research suggests 40,000 children are trafficked into labour in Benin every year and also to quarries in Nigeria where they are routinely beaten, starved and work gruelling shifts breaking rocks.
One self-confessed child trafficker estimates his family run business has brokered the sale of more than 3,000 to work as servants and labourers in ‘the last few years’.
Eric Abou, a Muslim, adds: ‘My mother is undergoing initiation. It’s very expensive, and she is not allowed to leave the convent until I have paid for the ceremonies.’ The suggestion that he might leave her there and save some money – and sell fewer children – is greeted with a nervous laugh. Voodoo is serious business.
· Director James Brabazon was in Benin with reporter Evan Williams. Their film ‘Unreported World: Voodoo Children’ will be shown on Channel 4 on Friday
Wow, how cool is this? WHAT is this? It’s like a dang old globster from the sky. Fact packed story-read on.
Mystery metal ball an outback space oddity
March 28, 2008 12:05am | www.news.com.au | By Sean Plambeck
* Man finds mysterious steel ball on farm
* Suspects it’s space junk but can’t confirm it
* Says some visitors recoil from the object
AN outback farmer is on a mission to identify a strange ball of twisted metal – purported to be fallen space junk – which mysteriously turned up on his remote property.
James Stirton of Cheepie, 130km from Charleville in southwestern Queensland, was heading out to feed cattle on his 40,500-hectare property when he came upon the bizarre-looking blackened ball.
“It was just off the road and I had been going up there every couple of days to feed cattle so I would be surprised if it had been there more than a week,†Mr Stirton said.
“We got a shock when we first saw it. I had no idea what it was.”
Suspecting it was a piece of space junk, Mr Stirton contacted the Aerospace Corporation – a research arm of the US Government – to get some sort of confirmation.
“I know about sheep and cattle but I don’t know much about satellites,†he said.
While a spokesman for Aerospace Corp. told NEWS.com.au it was still working to identify the object, aerospace industry sources who contacted Mr Stirton believe it to be part of a rocket launched at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 1998.
Investigation
Although he made the discovery in November last year, Mr Stirton waited until Easter to launch his own proper investigation into the object’s origin.
“I talked to some people in Charleville and got on the internet and kind of figured it out for myself,†Mr Stirton said.
He now believes the object is a helium tank wrapped in carbon fibre from a booster rocket used to launch communications satellites.
Mr Stirton said the ball appears to have landed partially on a tree stump, making a crater a few centimeters deep before rolling about 5m to its resting spot.
“If it hit you, you wouldn’t have gotten up,’’ he said.
“We don’t get many visitors here but anyone who has seen it has either wanted to touch it or has stood back afraid that someone was going to jump out of it.
“Everybody keeps telling me that it’s probably worth a lot of money but no one’s offered me anything for it yet.”
About 200 pieces of space junk – parts of satellites and jettisoned rockets – re-enter the atmosphere each year.
Most of it disintegrates but some pieces survive the enormous heat generated on re-entry and make it to the ground.
One in a trillion
The chances of being struck by space junk are one in a trillion and the only person ever reportedly struck described it as feeling like a gentle tap on her shoulder.
Yet space technology curator at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum Kerrie Dougherty said the objects could slam into the earth at hundreds of kilometres an hour.
“It’s not that uncommon to find something like this, particularly in that part of southwest Queensland because there is a very large area of ground for these objects to fall on,†she said.
“They’re not falling out there every day but there a few reports of people finding stuff each year.â€
Ms Dougherty said most rockets were launched over desolate areas or oceans to avoid parts falling on people and modern satellites were equipped with the ability to manoeuvre and fall back to earth over unpopulated areas.
This story is actually sort of sweet. A son made a bet with his aging father that if the old guy lived to 100 he’d hire a stripper for his funeral. Old guy made it to 103! It sounds as though his 103 years were vibrant and happy as he was able to travel around to strip shows and walk a long way to vote before expiring (according to FOX news reports anyway). Cheers and farewell.
Not the stripper. Not the dead guy.
Man hires stripper for father’s funeral
Wednesday March 26, 2008 | www.nzherald.co.
A man has honoured his dead father’s wishes by hiring a stripper for his funeral.
Taiwan’s United Daily News reports Cai Jinlai – who had a fondness for strip clubs – was promised an exotic dancer for his funeral if he lived to 100.
When he died at 103, leaving behind 100 descendants, his son Cai Ruigong filled his father’s wishes.
Ruigong told the newspaper that he paid more than NZ$210 for the stripper’s 10-minute performance around the coffin.
“He would travel around the island with his friends to see these [strip] shows,” he said.
When I first saw the stowaway snake line I was all ‘god, please let it be snakes on a plane.’ The truth is much scarier. The canebrake is the second deadliest snake in the US. The photo below shows a canebrake among fallen magnolia leaves on white sand, a very South Carolinian setting. Please note the alternate use of the CO2 fire extinguisher. Alton Brown is fond of saying it’s the only single purpose tool in his kitchen, but it’s alternate use could save ones life.
I just have to mention that this 49 year old coach lives with his mother, oh dear. He’s a boys varsity coach, my my. He went to Myrtle Beach for a conditioning trip, oh my stars and whiskers. It’s prime time for spring break right now too.
Stowaway Rattlesnake Bites Arlington Man
Tuesday, March 25, 2008; | www.washingtonpost.com
Unpacking a duffel bag in your Arlington County home seems pretty harmless. But that’s what Andrew Bacas was doing yesterday when a rattlesnake bit him.
Bacas, the varsity boys’ crew coach at Yorktown High School, had just returned home from a spring break conditioning trip to South Carolina with his team. He was unpacking his bag about 9:30 a.m. yesterday, after driving home Saturday, when he felt a sharp pain on his right hand.
“This little monster got into his gear somehow,” Esther Bacas, the coach’s mother, said of the 10-inch-long snake.
Somehow, her 49-year-old son managed to zip up the duffel bag to keep the snake inside and then call 911. Rescue workers rushed Bacas to Inova Fairfax Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition. His mother said his right hand was so swollen that he couldn’t hold the phone to talk to her from his intensive-care bed.
While Bacas was being given an antivenom serum at the hospital, rescue workers were back at his house in the 3400 block of North Venice Street with a potentially dangerous snake on their hands.
Chief Benjamin Barksdale said his rescue workers knew just how to handle the delicate situation: freeze the snake.
Using a 10-foot pole, rescue workers gingerly unzipped the duffel bag, just enough to slip in the nozzle of a carbon dioxide extinguisher, Barksdale said. Then, zap!
“One of the guys had seen it on TV,” Barksdale said. “But we’ve used it before to scare dogs away or freeze rodents.”
The Animal Welfare League of Arlington was called in to remove the frozen snake’s body. Then authorities were able to positively identify the culprit as a juvenile canebrake rattlesnake, one of the deadliest snakes in the United States.
No one is sure how the snake got into Bacas’s duffel bag, but his mother said her son believes it somehow slipped in while he was in South Carolina, then made the trip to Arlington undetected. Arlington police said they do not suspect foul play.
Karl Betz, a reptile expert at the Jacksonville Zoo in Florida, said canebrake bites have caused deaths, but usually those fatal blows are from snakes much larger than the one that attacked Bacas. It was clearly a baby, he said.
Betz said canebrake bites can cause tissue damage and affect the nervous system. In extreme cases, bites can cause respiratory arrest and heart stoppage.
“In my experience, it’s the second-deadliest snakebite you can get in the U.S.,” Betz said, after a bite from an eastern diamondback rattlesnake. “But this is the best-case scenario for being bit by a canebrake: the fact that it was a juvenile snake with a limited amount of venom.”
Betz said canebrakes are a lowland snake, found mostly in swampy areas throughout the eastern half of the United States and as far west as Texas. He said they’ve been found as far north as Canada.
Or Arlington.
Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
Ok, so this story is not new, but it’s new to me. Even better, it’s old enough to have an explanation, and a great wikipedia entry. The exploding toad page on wikipedia has links to “Exploding amphibians in popular culture.” The possibility of doing a thesis work on “Exploding amphibians in popular culture” is enough to make one look at graduate studies.
I’d guess somewhere toads are still exploding, but now that there’s no mystery, no one cares and its not news anymore. That’s sorta sad.
Exploding toads baffle Germans
Thursday 28th April 2005 10:18 GMT | www.theregister.co.uk | By Lester Haines
Updated German toad experts are baffled by an acute outbreak of exploding toad syndrome which has totalled hundreds of the amphibians since the beginning of the month. The former inhabitants of a Hamburg pond – now chillingly renamed the “pond of death” – spontaneously swelled to enormous proportions before going bang, in the process propelling their entrails for up to a metre.
Hamburg nature protection society spokesman, Werner Smolnik, told the Hamburger Abendblatt daily: “It looks like a scene from a science-fiction movie. The bloated animals suffer for several minutes before they finally die.”
Janne Kloepper, a boffin at Hamburg-based Institute for Hygiene and the Environment, added: “It’s absolutely strange. We have a really unique story here in Hamburg. This phenomenon really doesn’t seem to have appeared anywhere before.” She added that lab tests have ruled out a bacteriological or viral cause of the explosions, and have further shown the pond water to be normal. Tests for another possible agent – a fungus accidently introduced from South America* – have also proved negative.
The authorities have moved swiftly to protect the public from the exploding toad menace. The pond is now closed and a biologist is on station every night between 2 and 3am, when toad explosions reach a peak.
In Australia, meanwhile, we’re certain that toadologists are awaiting with eager anticipation the identification of the cause of the exploding German toad. Oz currently hosts 100 million unwelcome cane toads and there’s nothing the Aussies would like more than to see a landscape littered with the corpses of eviscerated, exploded toads.
Update
Mystery solved. We’re obliged to those readers who sent us the breathless news that today’s Der Spiegel says crows have been fingered as the culprits. Apparently the crow pecks a small hole in the toad to get at the liver. The toad begins to inflate itself – its normal defence mechanism – but because there is no separation between lung cavity and abdomen, the poor blighter keeps on expanding until it goes pop. That’s the gist of it, at least. We’re going to conclude by noting that if you tried to make this up, your friends would probably advise you to seek professional help.
Bootnote I
Ta very much to regular reader Rose Humphrey for the exploding toad alert.
Bootnote II
*We have no further information about the Latin American toad-detonating fungus. The mind boggles.
This sad story is a reminder of no matter how much technology we surround ourselves with, it’s a large planet shared by all manner of flora and fauna. It seems to have been an instant tragic end for both parties. Shocking and untimely as it was, a sunny day, in a beautiful place, surrounded by family is nice note to have left on. Sympathy and respect to the family.
Stingray Kills Woman on Boat in Fla.
AP | 3-21-2008
MARATHON, Fla. (AP) — A 75-pound stingray killed a Michigan woman Thursday when it flew out of the water and struck her face as she rode a boat in the Florida Keys, officials said.
Judy Kay Zagorski, of Pigeon, Mich., was sitting in the front seat of a boat going 25 mph when the spotted eagle ray, with a wingspan of 5 to 6 feet, leaped out of the water, said Jorge Pino, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The 57-year-old woman’s father was driving the boat on the Atlantic Ocean side of Vaca Key, Pino said.
“He had absolutely no warning. It just happened instantaneously,” Pino said.
The collision knocked Zagorski backward onto the floor of the boat, Pino said.
The impact likely killed the woman, and she did not appear to have puncture wounds from the ray’s barb, Pino said. An autopsy is planned, Pino said.
Zagorski’s sister was standing next to her when the stingray appeared but was not injured, Pino said.
The stingray landed in the 25-foot boat and died from the impact, officials said.
Spotted eagle rays can weigh 500 pounds and have a wingspan of up to 10 feet. They are known to occasionally jump out of the water but are not aggressive and use the venomous barb at the end of their tail for defense.
The rays are protected in Florida waters and are typically seen swimming on the water’s surface.
“Rays jump to escape a predator, give birth and shake off parasites,” said Lynn Gear, supervisor of fishes and reptiles at Theater of the Sea in Islamorada. “They do not attack people.”
In 2006, a South Florida man was also critically injured when a stingray flopped into his boat and stung him. James Bertakis, 82, of Lighthouse Point, underwent surgery because the stingray left a foot-long barb in his heart. He has since recovered.
Wow, a 27 kilogram or 59.5 pound tumor is really big. Since I’ve never seen a Vietnamese person of Samoan proportions, it makes the size of the tumor even more notable. It must have been such a relief and improvement in the quality of the unfortunate lady’s life.
Doctors remove 27kg tumour from ethnic woman
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2008/03/773428/ | 16:44′ 14/03/2008 (GMT+7)
VietNamNet Bridge – After a 2-hour operation, doctors at Hanoi-based Hospital K removed a 27kg tumour from a Tay ethnic woman, 38, from the northern mountainous province of Cao Bang.
According to Dr. Nguyen Van Tuyen, the chief surgeon, the tumour existed for eight years in the patient’s stomach and it got bigger and bigger.
She went to the General Hospital of Cao Bang province and was transferred to Hospital K, which specialises in tumour treatment, on March 5.
X-rays showed a huge tumour which filled up her stomach. Doctors decided to take it out because it could grow further and kill the patient.
According to Dr. Tuyen, this is the largest tumour that doctors of Hospital K have ever seen.
(Source: NLD)
HAL-9000: What is going to happen?
Dave: Something wonderful.
HAL-9000: I’m afraid.
Dave: Don’t be. We’ll be together.
HAL-9000: Where will we be?
Dave: Where I am now.
From the 1984 Peter Hyams film 2010: The Year We Make Contact
Kudos and farewell to a man, who made the world a much larger place.Â
A global figure, Arthur C Clarke never lost his sense of wonder
entertainment.timesonline.co.uk | March 19, 2008 | Peter Millar
Arthur Clarke was the father of British science-fiction and a global figure of immense importance to the defining literary genre of the 20th century.
He came to prominence shortly after the Second World War with an article predicting geostationary satellites that would make global broadcasting and worldwide television a reality, decades before they became possible.
His far-sightedness led him to write dozens of science fiction novels, of which perhaps the most famous is 2001: A Space Odyssey — made into a spectacular film by the late director Stanley Kubrick.
Clarke and Kubrick created a vision of outer space that was more than just technology but had a mythic quality that probed the philosophy of the universe.
The original story was a short novella dealing with the idea of Man’s evolution being inspired by the intervention of a distant god-like extra-terrestrial civilisation.
In the film the computer Hal, which went mad and nearly killed the astronauts on board a mission to Jupiter, was widely believed to have been derived by moving the letters IBM one step backwards. In an interview with me in the 1990s Clarke denied that this was so, and said it had merely been an amusing coincidence.
His own favourite work was Songs of Distant Earth — a nostalgic story of human colonists in a far-off part of the galaxy hankering after their origins.
Born in Minehead, Somerset, Clarke suffered as a young man from polio, which left him slightly disabled. After his success as a novelist he moved to Sri Lanka where he set up home with several local retainers, whom he treated as family. One of his great pleasures was scuba diving, which he undertook while already in advanced years, claiming that it gave him a feeling of weightlessness he knew he would never experience as an astronaut.
To the end of his life he never lost his sense of wonder, his sense of humour or his strong Somerset accent. While sorely disappointed with the failure of Man’s space flight to achieve the lofty goals that he had foreseen, he always retained an optimism about the Universe and Man’s place in it.
This salon and dog owner must be well versed in correctly and safely using hair dye, as she’s licensed to do so. Compared to what people do to dogs hair as seen in this post about grooming competitions, it’s silly she was fined. Some people dye their dog and get a medal, some dye their dog and get a fine.
This story is so so very contradictory and Coloradan. Miss Fidget considers the adoration and elevation of animals above humans a character flaw. If one is so filled with kindness to kittens and empathy to puppies how about teaching someone to read, or taking magazines to a homeless shelter?
Wanna read a post about a lost dog that turned up pink after traveling hundreds of km down under? Click here.
Boulder’s pink poodle owner preps for legal fight
By Denver Post | 03/11/2008
The Boulder salon owner facing a $1,000 fine for dyeing her poodle pink will have to wait for her day in court, The Daily Camera reports.
This morning Joy Douglas appeared before a judge in Boulder Municipal Court and asked for an extension because she now has an attorney.
The judge granted Douglas’ request and reset her hearing for April 7, the Camera reported.
Douglas, owner of Zing Hair Salon at 1100 Spruce St., received a $1,000 ticket from an animal-control officer for coloring her white poodle, Cici, pink by using organic beet juice.
Douglas spoke at length to The Post on Monday be declined to speak to a Post reporter after her court case this morning.
“We do it to promote awareness of breast cancer,” said Douglas, 30, who has owned the large hair salon for three years. “Cici is a conversation piece. Customers come in and ask why the dog is pink. So we tell them about breast-cancer awareness, about the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, and then we ask for a donation.”
Not everyone who saw pink Cici was pleased, and some customers called the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, whose commissioned officers enforce the city’s animal ordinances. One ordinance prohibits the coloring or dyeing of animals, a law that went into effect about five years ago to discourage families from dyeing rabbits and chicks for Easter.
“We’ve received a number of complaints about the dog,” said Lisa Pedersen, director of the humane society. “We’ve been out to talk with Joy several times. Finally, we gave her a ticket to let the courts decide the issue.”
This story is not new, but it is still notable. Do a quick search here at MissFidget.com to read about Bill Hedden who also lost an arm to a gator. Mr Hedden was quite sober when he encountered a gator, unlike this guy.Â
Adrian Apgar is still in a local hospital three months after losing an arm.
By EVA KIS | The Ledger | Tuesday, February 27, 2007
LAKELAND – Adrian J. Apgar was relaxing at a favorite quiet spot before work when his life changed last November.
The Polk City man told police that he’d come to sit on a rock near the bank of Lake Parker many times before the morning of Nov. 29, when an alligator came out of the shallow water and attacked him.
Nearly three months after the attack, Apgar, 45, remains at Lakeland Regional Medical Center, Gary Morse, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said Monday.
A newly released report by the wildlife commission sheds a few new details on what happened. While it said the alligator was not provoked, it did not conclude what led to the attack.
Trappers captured a 12-foot-2-inch alligator a few hours after the attack at Lake Parker County Park, and Morse said officials were reasonably sure it was the one that bit Apgar.
However, over the next three days, three more alligators were trapped and killed after the wildlife agency received reports that they were being fed. Alligators that are given food by humans overcome their natural fear and learn to associate humans with food.
Necropsies concluded that none of the animals had human remains in their stomachs.
“We weren’t necessarily expecting to find something,” Morse said. “They don’t always swallow what they’ve got.”
The report said Apgar told emergency workers and medical personnel shortly after the attack that he had smoked methamphetamine and fallen asleep before he was attacked.
He later tested positive for methamphetamines and marijuana, the report said.
However, when he was interviewed two months later by wildlife agency investigators, he said he had been sitting near the lake’s bank about 4 a.m. smoking a cigarette when he heard a growl and saw an alligator coming toward him, the report stated.
The gator grabbed him below the waist and dragged him into the water. It briefly released him, only to bite onto his right arm. Then, it clamped onto Apgar’s left arm and began to roll, which mostly tore the arm off except for a few tendons.
Apgar said he doesn’t remember anything that happened after that.
Witnesses who heard his screams called police and three Polk County sheriff’s deputies pulled him from the water.
Apgar was taken to LRMC for treatment. His left arm had to be amputated above the elbow, his right forearm was fractured, and several chunks from his side and buttocks were bitten off, along with other puncture wounds and injuries.
Apgar told investigators he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but he was naked when he was rescued.
Morse reminded residents that precautions must be taken in areas where alligators may live.
“All I can say is, don’t go near heavily vegetated areas at a lake between dusk and dawn – the same thing we’ve been saying for more than 30 years.”
Eva Kis can be reached at eva.kis@theledger.com or 863-802-7550.
Adrian J. Apgar