Popped my “got bit by an alligator” cherry

I’ve seen plenty of people get bit by an alligator before. I’ve been around for the little nips to the holy crap this could be serious. I prided myself on having been close but no cigar many times. Well I can reset the clock because after 10 years of playing with gators I finally got nailed.  What’s a gator bite feel like? Not as horrible as I though it was going to be. Don’t get me wrong I have no intentions of letting it happen again but it’s hardly the worse pain I’ve ever felt. When the gator latched on I remember looking down and thinking well dummy this is all your fault and it was. I sat on his back with half of my right hand in his mouth trying to keep him from rolling and doing serious damage to my hand. I couldn’t see any blood and I could wiggle my fingers so I felt a tiny sense of relief.  But how the hell was I going to get my hand out? I felt calm the entire time. I knew trying to jerk my hand out or going into a panic was going to end up bad for me. Luckily my girlfriend was on the right side of the fence and she was able to help sit on the gator and prevent it from thrashing around. I tried to use my free hand and pull it’s bottom jaw open but if you know anything about gators you also know that wasn’t going to happen. I sat on his back and felt so defeated. Never had I been bit and now that I was I couldn’t even get myself free and feel that sense of accomplishment.  With dejection in my voice I told some of my cousins to go get my mentor Jay Young and have him come save my ass.  It felt like I had been in this gators mouth for forever but in reality maybe 7 or 8 minutes had elapsed.  When Jay came racing around the corner I knew the fun part was just about to begin.   He jumped in and we tried wedging a stick between it’s jaws. That proceed to piss the gator off and he clamped down tighter a couple times. The thing about a gator is once it has something in it’s mouth it doesn’t want to let it go. Millions of years have made them an apex predator for a reason and he was showing he was above me on the food chain.  Finally we found a piece of metal that would allow us to pry against his teeth and it wouldn’t snap when he bit down harder, like the stick. Using the hand that was in his mouth and pulling towards myself hard with it and Jay using the pry bar  I could slowly feel the pressure weaken. As soon as I though I could safely pull my hand out I did and sat there looking at a tack size hole in the palm of my hand.  I flexed my finger and saw the tendon go back and forth.  Ugh that’s something I could have went my whole life without seeing. The hole filled with blood and I sat there thinking about how much worse it could have been. I think Jay could tell I was pissed and disappointed with myself and told me to hold my hand up so he could get my picture.  So there I saw dripping blood but smiling because when you work with giant predators bites come with the territory.  After we did the photo-op I climbed out of the pen and went to get a bucket of bleach water to clean out the wound.  I sat with my hand in a bucket watching the clear water turn a rust color and hopefully having the bleach water kill any bacteria that could have gotten into the wound.  After about 30 minutes Jay decided he needed to stick a Q-Tip into the puncture wounds and make sure they didn’t have any dirt or debris in them.  I can’t lie that was a worse pain than the bite itself so he and another friend took my mind off the pain by having me pose for more pictures with the Q-Tip sticking out of my palm. It worked and the wound was clean and so far no infections 24 hours later.  I still have full use of the hand although the ring finger knuckle is pretty swollen. I can’t wait for the wounds to heal so I can head back down to the farm and catch that gator again. Only this time I will keep my hands out of his mouth.