We all know the legend of the "Florida Man". He, if you're a believer, at least, is always defying the laws of this world, beating the odds.
But, of course, that's all a bit of fun. It's always super surprising, though, to see just how crazy these stories can get.
And this latest Florida man story is no less unhinged than any of the others you might have seen. This one involves an alligator, a fishing pole, and a heck of a lot of willpower.
As reported by Whiskey Riff, 71-year-old James Grayson McMicken was just trying to fish when he had a pretty big shock. He was outside his North Fort Meyers home with his bulldog, fishing in a canal, when the thing jumped out of the water and bit down on his leg.
"I started reeling," he recalled. "It jumped out of the water and grabbed me. He rolled me down off the bank into the water."
That sounds like a death sentence, right? Not for a Florida man. He simply told himself, "'I'm going to do everything I can not to die.'"
And what does that involve, you ask?
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The Florida Man Used His Fishing Pole to Attack the Alligator
"I stuck my thumb in one eye, I just took that fishing pole and jabbed him in that other eye and jabbed him and jabbed him and jabbed him," he recalled.
He said that he'd always remembered that "if you got no other choice, hit them eyes." And that was the trick. It's pretty good advice too, being touted by various websites online as a good final-resort option.
And I doubt there was many more resorts he could have taken, to be honest...
In any case, the Florida man managed to stave the alligator off. But it was his bulldog that helped him survive the whole thing. "I'd have never made it crawling this far, so I called my dog over," he recalled.
"She stood there and let me get up on her back to where i could get stood up." He managed to get himself back into his home, before having "sat down in [his] chair and passed out."
If nothing else, we're glad he's okay. Another story to prove the legend of the Florida man!
