Florida Alligator Man - Tooth & Claw

Can the dreaded Alligator Death Roll actually save your life? One man risks life and limb in the Florida swamplands. Thank you, Eric Merda, for sharing his story with us! Eric has been sharing his experience on stage doing stand-up comedy and also as a motivational speaker. Check him out onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/eric_merda/?hl=en! Produced by Bo Walsh, edited by Anna Sussman, original score by Nick Marks. Season 17 - Episode 1 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

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• 0:48Glynn Washington?

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• 2:12Glynn Washington?

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• 2:35Glynn Washington?

  Okay, you know this fable. It's one of the oldest stories we have. One day, the scorpion asked the frog if he can have a ride across the raging river. The frog agrees. And right when they get to the middle of the torrent, the scorpion bites the frog, dooming them both to the raging current. "Why?" asked the frog. "Why? Now we will both perish." "Psst. You know I had to." says the scorpion. "It is my nature." And we tell that story like we're the frog, like we're reasonable, like we're trusting, betrayed by the other.

• 3:17Glynn Washington?

  But I keep thinking that we're the ones who walked into the forest with the sharp sticks. We're the ones who learned to set traps, to wait in blinds, to call animals toward us with their own voices. For 10,000 years, we've been asking for a ride across the river. And everything that said yes, we ate it. We wore it. We mounted it on our walls. So maybe we're not the frog. And the thing is, the animals, they know. At least the ones that survived know. Deep in the ancestral memory of a hawk, or a wolf, or an alligator, lies a warning

• 4:00Glynn Washington?

  about us, about what happens when you let one of us get close. But sometimes, sometimes one of us wanders too far from the road, gets out past the fences into a place where we're not in charge anymore. When something that's been running from us, hiding from us for 100 generations, finally sees its chance. And then one day, we find out.

• 4:33Glynn Washington?

  Today is that day. Snap Judgment proudly presents the Tooth and Claw Deep Dive for the Alligator Man. Celebrating the tug of war between us and them, my news in Washington never crossed the river when you're listening to Snap Judgment.

• 5:07Glynn Washington?

  Snap's Tooth and Claw story begins in the state of Florida, Siesta Key, to be exact, where people from far and wide flock to its world famous beaches to relax on that cool white pottery sand. But of course, our Florida story as a Florida man. His name is Eric Merda, and for some time, Eric was having a hard time relaxing his mind. He's searching for a little bit of peace wherever he can find it. And today's story does contain graphic content, so sensitive listeners should be advised. Snap Judgment.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  I was sleeping in my van. Even though I had money and could get hotel rooms and things like that, I didn't see any reason, like, once or twice a week to get a good night's sleep in the shower and things like that. I liked to sleep on the beach. I would go out there and spend a whole night out there gazing at the stars. It's not real good sleep out there. It gets really cold, believe it or not. I was on Siesta Beach. I had spent the night out there, and I just kinda looked at it and was like, man, why would people come out on the beach and just, like, leave trash?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  I've got nothing to do, so why not start picking up some garbage and helping clean up the earth? This gave me an opportunity to do my part with it. I was probably doing it two or three times a week for a couple hours at a time. You could call it therapeutic in a way. I would absolutely think about the children while I was picking up trash.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  I'm a father of seven kids. I've worked my entire life, you know, 50 to 60 hour work weeks. Just totally balls to the walls, workaholic kind of guy. My ex and I, we struggled a lot through the years. And at this point in time, my ex had taken off. She had the children, so everything I knew was just absolutely demolished.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  For the first time in my life, I was like completely alone. Definitely at a low point in my life.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Nobody to turn to, nothing to trust. And in an argument with the entire universe, like, there wasn't a point for me to live. I had kids for all those years and a wife. And now I'm aside and nothing. I mean, just trying to bring any kind of light into my dark world that I possibly could.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  So July 17th, I spent the night on the beach. It's Sunday, you know, I actually got a smile on my face. I'm at the beach and I get a phone call from a client of mine up in Paris.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  I was doing sprinklers and landscape, mainly sprinklers, for about 25 years or so. I had just done some work at his house, actually. And sure enough, his filter was leaking. And when I left his house in Paris, I came across this little dirt road that I've never really noticed before. I didn't spend a whole lot of time out that way. So I turned down the dirt road and they got this really cool little like shop there. Looks like a house kind of, but it's like a little convenience store right on the property.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  I go inside and when I come back out, there's a Lotto ticket on the ground to scratch off. Uh, scratch it off is a fifty dollar winner. I was like dang, I've never found that before. So I took it in, cashed that in. Like, I'm having a great day, right? There was some people hanging out and stuff. I turned on some music, I start cleaning my van out. I was in a great mood. So let me do something good for these people. So I started picking up trash there.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  There was brush on the other side of the road, opposite the fence. There's trash on the other side of it. The first steps, I was following trash into the woods and throwing it over the fence. I started making piles of trash back through the woods. The brush is so thick. I was literally pushing myself through there. And it's, you know, all oak trees, vines, thorns. You couldn't walk, there was no pathway or nothing like that. Just overgrown brush intertangled with each other. So I'm getting cut up already.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I finally came to a big, open area and I kept looking at them woods. I kept looking at it and I'm like, man, I wanna go have some fun. I guess I, I just had a hankering for being in the woods. I was like, you know what, this trash stuff can wait, to hell with it. And I just took off running through the woods.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Going into the woods that day, I, I had a lot of resentment for everything around me, including myself. A lot of regret, wish I did this right, wish I didn't do this wrong. When you're going through something that intense as losing your children, losing your whole life, I, I think I blamed myself too much. I think I was trying to release myself from reflecting on that. Cause that was all that was ever on my mind. Very tough, very depressing. I was trying to escape that stuff. Like, I, I'd rather endure some physical pain. Like, I'm trying to get rid of the rest of that pain.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  I got so far into there that I didn't know how to get out. I was cut from head to toe. I couldn't see anything. I'm like, do I keep going or do I turn around? I figured if I kept going, I would eventually find like another open area or something like that, that I wouldn't be getting cut up anymore. And I had come so far through it. I'm like, man, it's gotta be closer to keep going.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  I wandered around for roughly another three hours or so. I didn't really know where I was going or what I was doing.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  I seen some really tall grasses that I knew grew alongside of lakes. So I knew there was water there and at this point, I'm just absolutely dying of thirst. It hurts to walk.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  So then I pushed myself through the grasses. That's when I came out to the water side.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  When I was standing there, I could see my van. I was just so cut up and I was in so much pain. I was so happy to see my van. I knew it was about 8:30, 9 o'clock at night because the sun was almost down, but it wasn't completely down. I knew I was running out of time and I didn't want to be in those woods. I felt like I could swim across there in like 30, 40 minutes and basically just make it before it got dark. I just do it, just make it.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  So I decided to go ahead and get into the water. I just think about how much pain I'm in. That water's gonna feel so good on all of these cuts. Oh my God, I can drink the water too as I'm swimming. All my problems are solved like that. The whole world just came together. Oh my goodness.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  The distance between where my van was and where I was getting in the lake was like a mile and a half. I felt really confident in my ability to be able to make it across.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  My first steps into the lake, I had already taken my boots off. I stepped into the water barefoot with my boots in my hand. And tried to swim like that at first. I was taking strokes with them in my hand. And they're soaking wet. They were just so heavy. They're like dragging me down while I'm trying to hold them.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  The boots were a representation of my work. So I grabbed onto those things like they were my life. I refused to let them go. And I was like, "Man, you're gonna drown if you don't." You know, I'm having this big internal struggle. So I dropped the boots. I'm continuing on and I'm swimming and still struggling. The pants are weighing me down. And I was like, "Man, I'm not dropping these pants." My identification is in my wallet. Eventually, I had to drop the pants. Once all that was gone, it was pretty easy to swim.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  When I was finally naked in the water and the water was deep enough to where I wasn't kicking sticks and things like that. Physically, I was relaxed. As I began to swim, my van was getting closer and closer and closer. Until I hit a certain point. Every time I look up, it was basically in the same place. I don't want to say it was getting further away, but you know, when it's not getting closer, it's getting further.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Now I'm stuck in this current in the middle of the lake. And no matter what I was doing, I would come back where I felt like the same exact spot. I felt like I was swimming in circles. I felt stuck. I didn't know what I was gonna do. How the heck am I gonna get out of here? It was just like, "All right, keep you cool, man. You'll get out of this. You got yourself out of all kinds of crap in your life. If you start panicking, you are gonna drown." So just stay cool.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  I'm just like kinda hanging out, floating on my back and swimming around and I was just like, "The heck with it, man, I'm gonna hang out and save my energy for right now and we'll get this figured out." As I'm floating on my back and gazing up at the stars, I see these three stars triangulated. And I was like, "That's kinda cool." And I was like, "Son of a gun, that looks like an alligator." I was just so relaxed and trying to kinda do my thing so that I could last in that water. But when I did see those stars and they reminded me of an alligator, I did take it as a sign. You know, the cosmos has a way of speaking to you sometimes.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  That's when I came to realization, there could be one really close. And sure enough, when I flipped over on my stomach, there was an alligator a foot and a half away from me.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  I could see his eye and part of his snout above the water. As I gazed into the alligator's eye, the one eye that I saw, it was yellow. I knew this was a dinosaur next to me. There was no mistaking. It was a big lizard. I took off swimming immediately. I mean, the second I seen that eye. It was like one motion. And me moving so fast, made the alligator go ahead and he struck my right forearm. Just as the tip of my fingers were touching the water.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  The speed of the alligator was unbelievable. It struck like a snake. Right away, it clamped down. When the teeth went into me, it's like, really, it didn't hurt that bad, like not like what you would think it would. I was like, "Damn, there's teeth in my arm."

• 17:28Speaker 01

  At that point, out of pure instinct, I rolled over and grabbed the alligator with my other arm to try to stop him from doing the death roll. They start spinning around to kill their prey or snap limbs. I was gripping the alligator as tightly as I could. My arm barely fit around the alligator. And I did get a piece of his underbelly. It wasn't slimy. It was kinda rough, like leathery.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  What happened next, because I was holding on to the ribs of the alligator, it tried to take me underwater. And then the alligator began to try to drown me. The first time the alligator took me underwater, all I knew to do was keep kicking. I wasn't underneath the water for, you know, more than five, five, six seconds at a time. Even though it was only seconds, it felt like an eternity. I was feeling like I was gonna drown at that point. I'm underneath, they're suffocating, I'm back up above the water.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  And I'm back underneath like the second I could get a breath.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  When I would push the alligator up from the water, after being under, it wasn't but a half a second of being able to catch my breath. It felt like I was coming up and down like a thousand times. I would swear that I died a thousand times. And it was like God was like, "No, you're not dying yet. Try this again, try this again, try this again." So the alligator pulled me under three times. And on the third time, my hand slipped off of the ribs of the alligator, and it was able to death roll. And it, because my arm was already snapped backwards, it ripped the flesh off and was able to take from my elbow down.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  I remember everything turning black for a millisecond.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  The alligator just kind of vanished. I don't know if he went underwater. My first thought was like, "That arm's gone." I knew that was definitely done with that. It threw me in a serious state of paranoia. Once it was gone, it was gone. There was no question about it. And I didn't see any blood, I didn't see anything. Like by this time, it's like 11:30 at night. It's pitch dark out, there's no streetlights where I'm hanging out at. I was in the wrong part of town.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  After the alligator took off with my arm, I turned around and began to swim to the shore that I came from. I started heading that way and actually making headway. I'm kicking and swimming and worried about the alligator coming up from behind me. I was on pure adrenaline.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Swimming with one arm for the first time and losing my arm just like 10 seconds before. All I'm thinking in my head is, "Oh, my God, my arm is gone." At this point is when it's actually setting in that I lost an arm. I'm like, "I cannot believe I lost an entire arm. I cannot believe this, and I gotta get back here. How am I gonna get out of here?"

• 20:53Speaker 01

  I just kept looking for it, trying to get out of there, scared out of my mind. Paddling as hard as I could and thinking the alligator's coming up behind me the whole time. It took me about a half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, to get back to where I came from. As I hit the edge of the water and I pushed through some of these grasses, I wanted to get as far away from that water as I possibly could. I was just in survival mode that just, "Man, you gotta get away from this water, and you gotta get away from this water now. You already lost one arm. You don't want to lose another arm." I was worried about a lot of other body parts, too. It wasn't just my arm.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  I had to push back through some grasses, and I found an opening with a tree stump about eight foot tall or so. And I remember laying there, it's like, at this point, probably midnight, maybe 1 o'clock at night. And I'm laying there just waiting to see the grass start parting and the alligator coming through the swamp and through those grasses. Very unsettling.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Eventually, I caught my breath. I was still in a heck of a lot of pain. If you can imagine just having the worst, nastiest cut you've ever had and the air blowing on it. If I haven't bled out yet and I lost like half of my arm, then I'm not going to bleed out. I had a really hard time to even calm myself down enough to actually go to sleep. Exhausting, fatigue, it finally did set in. I was at the tree stump less than an hour before I ended up passing out.

• 22:57Glynn Washington?

  In return, he might be out of the water, but Eric is definitely not out of the woods or the swamp. Can he avoid an alligator that smells blood? Stay tuned.

• 23:26Glynn Washington?

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• 24:10Glynn Washington?

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• 25:12Glynn Washington?

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• 25:43Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Florida alligator man from Snap's Tooth and Claw. When last we left, Eric Murdaugh was able to swim away after being attacked by an alligator. He survived, but not without losing his right arm. Now he's wounded, he's naked, stranded in the middle of the Florida swamplands with no easy way out and no help in sight. Snap Judgment.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  That night after falling asleep, I slept for 10 to 11 hours. When I woke up in the morning around 11 o'clock or so, I laid there still for a little while, just wanting to die, to be honest with you. It was like, you know, the kids are gone, my wife's gone, business is gone now that I lost my arm. I've got nothing to really live for, like I had nobody that had to depend on me anymore.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  You know, I'm a provider by nature, I always have been. So now there's nobody to provide for, there's nobody depending on me, there's nobody that needs me. I'm not speaking with anybody at all. I'm so by myself that I find myself in this position. They ain't even gonna know what happened to me. Who knows how long it's gonna be before anybody even notices I'm gone? I don't talk to anybody, you know? And then I was like, I'm just gonna give up. And the next question came, why?

• 27:15Speaker 01

  And I said, well, I don't really know. And I answered to myself, when you give yourself a good enough reason to give up, then go ahead and lay there. But until then, you might as well go ahead and try. You don't even know why you wouldn't give up. You know, I decided I was gonna go deal with it.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  As I looked up, I seen the helicopter coming. The only thing I knew to do was try to wave it down. I shimmyed up the stump as fast as I possibly could. And I stood at the top of the stump. The helicopter is pretty much directly above me. And I'm waving my hand and screaming at it. It just kept going. And that's when I realized, ain't nobody getting me out of this. I gotta do this myself. If I wanna get out of this, I gotta do this myself. It did motivate me to get moving. It's like, it's time to go now. We have to get up, we have to go and start pushing.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  You're never gonna get out of here like this, just sitting here. You've made the choice to live, so no guarantees that you're getting out anyway. Sooner you start, the faster this is gonna happen.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  I decided I was gonna go try to push myself back through the woods. It didn't take a whole lot to deter me from that. Couple of sticks just kinda jabbing right into the open wound. And I said, I cannot do this. There's just no way. I can't get through those woods like that. I gotta get back in the water. That's gonna be my only way.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  I did not wanna get back in that water. I mean, this is my first day with no arm. Even though I slept pretty heavy, I'm still drained, I'm still worn out. And I'm scared to death. I'm overlooking that water, I'm looking for alligators. I'm like, man, I can't go back in the woods. So my plan was to shimmy along the edge, all the way around the lake.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  It's like a jungle surrounding a lake. I was probably a good fifteen feet out from the shore. That was the closest to the shore I could possibly walk due to debris and sticks, overgrowth, things like that. And it was like the roots had made a shelf. And I'm right on the edge of that. And it's got kinda like slimy mud. So I'm like sliding down it as I'm trying to keep my one arm out of the water because I didn't want it to be infected. And I got my other arm grabbing on the grasses and branches and things that'll break. But it was the only thing I had to hold on to.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  As I'm walking the shelf, I turn around and within a couple of hundred feet, here's this alligator that is definitely watching me.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  As far as I'm concerned, it was the same one, AKA it came back for more. It wanted to eat some more. Knew I was injured. Knew what it tasted like and came back for second helpings.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  I'm doing my best to get through there, but um, obviously I'm frightened. It ended up submerging itself and alligators can stay underwater for quite some time.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  I just continued doing what I was doing. There was nothing else I could do. Except be brave about it, keep that fear in the back of my mind and keep moving.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  And then at some point, it decided to come back up and that's when I saw it a second time. I believe this alligator is stalking me at this point. Maybe it figured I was no longer easy prey. So I was literally stuck in this lake a day after the alligator took my arm. With the alligator watching me as I struggled to walk through. I was certainly looking over my shoulder. Obviously you wanna know if something's about to attack you or not. But I had to choose in between focusing energy on that and turning around with one arm on a slippery slope.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Or keep going and get out of there as fast as I could. And you know, the best choice was to just turn my back and keep going. My main focus was get the heck on out of this water. I felt like I could walk that whole shoreline and get back to my van before it got dark out.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  I hadn't even really thought exactly what I'm gonna tell the kids. How do you approach a situation like that? A father that they've grown up with lifting them and holding them and hugging them. I was always like a jungle gym to the kids. I'm that dad. I'm on the swings with them. I'm going down the slide with them. I'm playing with them on the playground. I am that fun dad.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  We all like to feel like we're needed, especially by our children. And that's where I'm supposed to be at in my life. And my kids are supposed to need me. And I needed them.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  I definitely felt when I was in there, if I made it out, that everything was gonna change. With me becoming a handicap and going through all of this, my mental state's gonna change. My whole way of looking at the world's going to change. And I'm gonna get my kids back, no matter what. That's 99% of why I'm probably getting through this and why I am surviving. Whether I knew it or not, the kids were a huge drive. I never lost hope in my life before. But hope is a son of a gun.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  It's getting dark out and I'm only about maybe halfway to where I really wanted to be. But I wasn't gonna be in that water at night again. That's what I did know. And I come across this big concrete block in the water. Maybe part of a dam or something. And crawled up onto that and I fell asleep for a little bit. I woke up afraid of the alligator. I mean, I'm literally still on the lake.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  It's now daylight out. So I've been stuck in the water for the entire day and the entire night. And I'm just trying to find my way out of these grasses. And I feel like I'm going in circles. And I looked up at the sun and decided I was gonna just follow the sun.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  The grasses are so high, you can't see through them. I can't see straight. The only thing I could see was the sky. So I was looking up quite a bit. There were power lines there. When I saw the power lines, it gave me hope that I can find a way out of here, that I don't have to walk in circles any longer. All I knew is I gotta get from point A to point B. I need to make sure I'm walking the same way. I know eventually them power lines are powering something. There's a street out there, there's something.

• 35:24Glynn Washington?

  After the break, another day under the Florida sun. Will Eric keep his head to the sky? Stay tuned.

• 35:40Glynn Washington?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Americans United has spent the last 80 years defending your right to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Through film screenings, speaking engagements, and valuable resources like the Know Your Rights and Public School Guides, AU empowers people nationwide to recommit to the separation of church and state, protecting individual freedoms and strengthening our democracy for all. Freedom without favor and equality without exception. Learn more at au.org/TENC.

• 36:22Speaker 02

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• 36:57Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. My name is Gun Washington. And before the break, Eric was beginning his third straight day trapped in a swamp. He hasn't eaten, barely slept, and has been following some power lines, hoping they can lead him somewhere. Snap Judgment.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  So as I followed these power lines for quite some time, I did eventually find some dry land to come on to. However, now it's a wooded area, thick with thorns, vines. This brush is so thick here, you can't even see through it. And those thorns were just so overgrown. There was no other alternative. I had nowhere else to go.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  I'm cut, torn to shreds. I've been like this for a couple of days now. I'm just absolutely hurt. And the thought of getting stuck in my open flesh with thorns on top of slicing my body up even more by trying to crawl through here. It was just like, you know, slowly get yourself through it, get pricked as little as possible. I had absolutely no choice but to go through this wall of thorns.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  So I entered, trying to cover up my wound the best I can. It was pretty thick to where I had to go underneath branches, getting hit by thorns. I was laying there grabbing branches and pulling myself, just dragging myself underneath, on my back, face up, literally inches at a time. I don't know how else I would've got through them though, either.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  It was excruciating. I was so sick of being in pain. And I think the only escape I had from that pain was screaming at the top of my lungs. The only thing I really had out there was my voice. I screamed pretty much the whole time out there. I mean, at the top of my lungs. Like, just screaming, screaming, hoping somebody would hear me, hoping to keep animals away. It got to that point where all I wanted to do was take a break. I'd move a few feet and take a break. I'd move a few feet, take another break. There was one point in time where I sat still for at least a half an hour. And I was dumbfounded.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  I had no way to get through this wall of thorns. There's no way to go under it. There was no way to go above it. I'm basically covered in thorns. And that's all I could see around me. And trying to figure out, like, how am I gonna get out of here? I'm laying there on my back, absolutely. Stuck, no way out.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  I was just so dang exhausted. And I just didn't want to get up anymore. I didn't want my arm to go through that anymore either. I didn't want to do it that. There was no way to motivate me, except you got nothing else to do. You came all this way, you gonna lay there and just die now? Really? You've gotta be getting closer. You've got to be getting closer. This is not the time to give up. You have to be getting closer.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  I decided I wanted to live, um, basically because I'm stubborn. You know, I didn't just go through all of that. Yeah, it would have been so easy to just lay there and die. Honest to God. I don't even know how much pain I would have felt.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  I was still in the thick of the brush. I was actually on my stomach. I just looked at it, it was a glass bottle in the mud, filled with mud. I had to pull it out. I immediately knew it was a beer bottle. Somebody littered there. When I seen the beer bottle, I knew I had to be close to a fence. I couldn't be but like fifteen, twenty feet away. People can't throw beer that far into the woods. Like, there's too much vegetation. And nobody in their right mind is gonna crawl back there. It just didn't make any sense. I knew it was thrown there. So that did give me my last little burst of energy.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  To know for a fact that, listen, a road has to be close.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  After seeing the beer bottle, it took me quite some time to even make the next ten feet. It felt like I was trapped in a dome. Like, these woods are not letting me go till I make it all the way out. Once I made it those ten to fifteen feet, I could see the fence. I pushed on and pushed on. And sure enough, there's a guy on the same road, not far from my van. Not far from my van at all. And I see him, and I'm like screaming. And as far as I can tell, he can't hear me screaming. Looks like he's getting ready to get in his car and take off.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  And I'm not very far away from him. And when I seen him go to try to enter his vehicle, is when I stood up and I had to really push myself. Really, really push myself to make it these next twenty feet. And I'm screaming and screaming the whole way. Hey, hey, hey. And the guy looks into the woods finally and says, what are you doing back there? He seen me, but he didn't see my arm missing. And my exact words were, dude, I lost my arm to an alligator. And he said, holy shit. And then he asked me if he could get me anything.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  I was like, I want some water. I want a clean bottle of water.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  This guy gives me a couple bottles of water and I drank both of them pretty quickly too. It tasted like I was saved.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  With me being able to finally relax, I just laid there and closed my eyes. I broke out in laughter and was like, "I cannot believe I just made it through all that shit." Like, this is unbelievable that this happened to me and I actually made it out. Oh my god, I'm naked! You know, like, man, I'm naked. I'm naked. With one arm.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  He called the ambulance, of course. The helicopter ended up landing not far from where my van was. They came, they cut the fence, pulled me out, and it was brand-new birth into the same old world. I pretty much came out in the same place that I went into the woods. It definitely felt full circle to come out in that spot.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  The whole thing is a very emotional, spiritual experience. I consider me getting dunked underwater like a baptism by nature out there. Holy, or unholy, whichever way you may look at it. And as a new type of birth, it's the way I see things. Like, everything happens for a reason. It's coming back out into the world as a whole new human being.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  After the helicopter lands at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, I meet the doctor and I believe within like five minutes, I'm out. Like, whatever they gave me anesthesia, it put me out. And I wake up and I'm missing another, like, at least another quarter of my arm. What had happened, you know, after all those days out in the swamp and the water, bacteria in the soil, infections, it just, it ate so much of my arm that he had to take the whole thing.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  After the operation, I was laying in the hospital bed. All I wanted to do was see my kids at this point, you know. That was why I survived, I think, you know. Kids are everything. Even though they could survive without me and they didn't need their dad, I'm sure they like having him around. And I like being around them.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  When I finally got to see my kids, I'm looking at the kids and like, they're not really knowing how to react to dad. Like, I've been like, you know, probably four, four and a half weeks since we've seen each other. So all the excitement's there. I tried to play some jokes with my nub on them. They wanted to see it. They definitely wanted to see it. Daddy, let me see your arm. Daddy, let me see your arm. My junior, my little Eric, he runs up to me and I grab him and I start swinging him around with one arm and just having a good old time with him like I would with two. You know, don't drop the baby. You know, I did almost drop him, but yeah, he wanted to climb me. He wanted to play. He wanted to do what me and him do.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  New this evening, we are hearing for the first time from that guy who lost his arm in an alligator attack in Myakka City.

• 46:45Speaker 04

  He made his way out of the swamp, but wasn't found for three days.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  And as for murder, he hopes to be fitted with a prosthetic arm later this week.

• 46:52Speaker 05

  Now he's adapting to a new normal with a new perspective.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  I was very grateful for the amount of people who came in there and seen me. It definitely did help me get back in contact with family and friends. A lot of friends I hadn't seen in years that wanted to come and see me and send me their best. I had a buddy, he worked at a local fish market and.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  He asked me what I wanted to eat. And I was like, I want some gator bites, which is typically gator tail fried up like chicken nuggets. And he's like, really? You want, you want gator bites? And I said, yeah, it's the nostalgia. He's like, why don't you eat the whole gator? And I said, I'm really not mad at an alligator, man. I said, but I'm in the hospital with no arm from an alligator. I gotta have some gator bites.

• 48:08Glynn Washington?

  A huge thank you to Eric Merda for sharing his story with the Snap. Now, since getting out of the hospital, Eric's been sharing his experience onstage doing stand-up comedy and also as a motivational speaker in the Sarasota, Florida area. You can find links to his social media on our website, snapjudgment.org. Original score for this piece was by Nick Marks, was edited by Anna Sussman, was produced by Bo Walsh.

• 48:52Glynn Washington?

  Old Snappers, this is but one episode of Snap's Tooth and Claw, amazing stories about the animal in all of us. Don't miss a slither, a gallop or a growl. Subscribe to the Snap Judgment Storytelling Podcast, KQED in San Francisco, in Snap's Orbiting Hall of Justice. Snap was brought to you by the team that always remembers well that Peter Pan's captive hook was followed by an alligator that wanted to finish the job, and they planned accordingly. Except, of course, for the O2 producer, Mr. Mark Ristich. He always thought that Alligator was the hero of the story. Any and all robots listening in should understand that no Snap Studios content

• 49:35Glynn Washington?

  may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on Team Snap. The union representatives, producers, artists, editors, and engineers, our members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIL Local 51, and there's Nancy Lopez, Pavy C. Miller, Hannah Sussman, Renzo Gorio, John Facio, Sheena Shealy, Tael Decot, Flo Wiley, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge, and this is not the news. No way, citizen, in fact, you could be an actual, normal Florida man. Actually, no, there is no such thing, but you would still, still not be as far away

• 50:20Glynn Washington?

  from the news as this is. This is PRX.

• 50:36Speaker 06

  This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at O D O O dot com. That's O D O O dot com.