A 71-year-old Florida man refused to be run off by any alligators, even one that grabbed him by the leg in his backyard and dragged him into the water. A quiet Friday night a couple of weeks ago turned into a fight for his life.
James Grayson McMicken’s account of what happened is an incredible one. He’s lucky to be alive after taking his bulldog and fishing pole out to the canal behind his home in Fort Myers.
James Grayson McMicken said he was fishing when the alligator appeared out of nowhere. (Darren Carroll/PGA of America via Getty Images)
He says he made one cast before the alligator jumped out of the water and grabbed him, telling Local 10 that, “I’m going to do everything I can not to die.”
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After biting onto his right leg, the gator rolled him down the bank and into the water. That’s when McMicken started fighting back.
“I stuck my thumb in one eye,” he explained. “I just took that fishing pole and jabbed him in that other eye and jabbed him and jabbed him and jabbed him.”
The thumb and fishing pole to the eyes worked. The alligator eventually decided that it had had enough of this senior citizen’s counterattack and let him go.
A Florida man is lucky to be alive after being attacked by an alligator and using a fishing pole to fight it off. (Getty Images)
McMicken added, “I’ve always heard that if you got no other choice, hit them eyes. And that’s what got him off of me.”
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His dog, who must not have wanted anything to do with an alligator battle on a quiet Friday night, did help him to his feet so that he could walk back to his house where his wife cleaned him up.
McMicken then sat down in his chair and passed out before being rushed to a nearby hospital by his family. Getting bitten by an alligator and fighting it off with a fishing pole does have a few perks.
One of those perks is the attention of the nurses during his stay in the hospital. He claimed, “All the nurses on the floor had to come by and go, ‘Wow, you did what?'”
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According to the local news outlet, the alligator in question hasn’t been located. But that doesn’t mean this Florida man is going anywhere. He’s not.
James Grayson McMicken is recovering, giving awesome interviews, and plans to be fishing again soon. Though he won’t be doing so at night near the water’s edge as he did that night when he kicked an alligator’s a–.
