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Moncks Corner, SC – According to authorities, a woman that was walking a trail in Moncks Corner was bitten by an alligator Monday afternoon.

Officials say the attack happened at Cypress Gardens when the woman was walking a trail with her husband. Investigators say a 5 to 6-foot alligator bit the woman’s hand and leg.

Department of Natural Resources officials are searching for the gator but so far there haven’t been any sightings. Guests at Cypress Gardens are warned about the possibility of seeing animals and are told to keep their distance, but park officials say this time of year it is not unusual to see a dangeous gator.

Director of Cypress Gardens Dwight Williams says,”One of the attractions of Cypress Gardens is the possibility of seeing wild alligators. We don’t know how many are in the swamp. On a day like today, it is typical to see alligators sunning themselves beside the swamp as spring comes.”

Berkeley County took over control of Cypress Gardens in 1996 and officials say there have not been any alligator attacks here since that time. The victim has been taken to MUSC.

Authorities say the woman was able to walk out of the park on her own. Officials don’t believe her injuries to be life threatening.

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Officials believe they have found an alligator that escaped from a wildlife officer who brought the animal to his daughter’s school for show and tell.

Stan Kirkland, a spokesman for the Florida wildlife commission, says officials think the 5-foot alligator is in a Panhandle pond. Authorities weren’t able to capture the gator Friday.

Searchers scoured a wooded area surrounding the school Friday afternoon after the alligator jumped out of the man’s vehicle with its mouth taped shut.

Kirkland says alligators have “amazing” jumping ability and that allowed it to escape.

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Bob Schenck waded through the leech-filled swamp, creeping closer to the alligator.

“It was waiting, aggressive and ready to attack,” Schenck said today. When the moment was right, he pounced, maneuvering around the 5-foot reptile’s open jaws as he subdued it on Sunday.

Schenck with alligator

Schenk wasn’t in Africa, or even Florida. He was tangling with the stray 50-pound reptile in a dirty drainage ditch behind a Fall River mall.The gator was spotted several times Sunday near Route 24 in Fall River, according to authorities. Animal control officers and Schenck, who owns a pet store in the city, responded about 4:30 p.m. after a police officer reported a sighting, said Cynthia Berard, Fall River’s animal control supervisor.

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A 77-year-old man lost his arm below the elbow Thursday when he was attacked by an alligator while playing golf on Fripp Island.

The man, the father of a Fripp Island property owner, was playing the 11th hole of the island’s Ocean Creek Golf Course at about 3 p.m. when the attack occurred. The victim was leaning down to pick up his ball when a 10-foot long alligator grabbed his arm, said Kate Hines, general manager of the Fripp Island Property Owners Association.

Hines said the alligator dragged the man into a nearby pond and went into a series of “death rolls,” a technique the reptile uses to tear apart its food. The man lost his arm in the struggle.

The man’s golf buddies were able to free him from the alligator’s grasp and called 911. They kept an eye on the alligator until workers from Tracks Wildlife Control in Beaufort arrived, Hines said.

The victim, visiting family on the island, was taken to Beaufort Memorial Hospital.Tracks workers killed the alligator and performed a necropsy at the scene to remove the man’s arm from the animal’s digestive track, Hines said.

The arm was stored in a cooler in the hopes of re-attaching it. The victim was flown at about 5:30 p.m. to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. His condition was unknown late Thursday night.

There have been 10 confirmed alligator attacks in the past 25 years in South Carolina, according to state’s Department of Natural Resources. DNR estimates that 100,000 to 200,000 American alligators live along South Carolina’s coasts.

Thursday’s attack could have been caused by any number of factors, said Joe Maffo, owner of Critter Management, a Hilton Head Island business specializing in alligator removal.

“It could have been a mother protecting her brood, this alligator may have been fed before by people or it could have been a dominance thing and the alligator felt he was trespassing,” Maffo said. “These kinds of attacks are very, very unusual and very, very unfortunate. It’s sad.”

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Texas-born Simon Hughes, 5, doesn’t look intimidating. But put a gun in his hands and pit him against an 800-pound alligator and it’s a different story.

Simon’s been training to handle a gun since he was just 4, his dad told MyFOXHouston — and it’s a good thing, too, or else he could’ve gotten hurt by the mega-gator that wound up on the Hughes family ranch.

The huge alligator bit into a baited hook in a marsh on the property, coming face-to-face with Simon. The boy reacted with lightning speed, grabbing his gun and shooting the reptile in the head.

“It come out, the biggest alligator I’ve ever seen,” Simon told MyFOXHouston. “He did his death roll.”

The reptile was nearly 20 times the 3-foot, 44-pound boy’s size. It didn’t survive the shooting.

Click here for video.

His dad Scott Hughes said there’s a reason he started training his son, who is in kindergarten, to shoot guns at such an early age.

“Everything on the ranch will either bite you or stick you,” he told MyFOXHouston.

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CLEARWATER, FL — Authorities say a Clearwater woman walking her dog by a lake was bitten by an 8-foot alligator but managed to escape.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reports that 48-year-old Diane Blackwood was just a few feet from the lake Monday afternoon when she noticed a swirl in the water. The alligator attacked, and her dog ran away.

Blackwood says the gator clamped down on her left calf and began pulling her toward the water. She was able to jab the animal in the eye with her thumb, which gave her a chance to get away.

Blackwood was taken to a nearby hospital where she was treated for the bite.

Trappers caught an alligator Tuesday and were able to match its bite to Blackwood’s injury.

The alligator was killed, and its meat and hide will be sold.

©2009 Associated Press

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• Alligator bite fact sheet
• Guide to living with gators (.pdf)
• Email TV reporter Josh Rojas

PINELLAS COUNTY (Bay News 9) — A Clearwater woman is the first person in more than three years to be attacked by an alligator in Pinellas County.

Diane Blackwood, 48, was walking her dog on a leash Monday afternoon at Sawgrass Lake Park in St. Petersburg when she noticed a swirl in the water.

“I was standing under a tree for some shade,’ she said. “My dog was near the water when I noticed some swirling water. I knew it was a gator and called for my dog as I turned to run away. That’s when I slipped and fell on the embankment. My dog ran away.”

The gator missed her on the first lunge, but it was not deterred. It grabbed her on the second lunge.

“As I was trying to crawl away the gator lunged and missed me,’ she said. “I thought okay I’m going to get away. Then the gator lunged a second time and bit my calf.”

The reptile also bit Blackwood’s hand as she tried to free her calf from its jaws.

“I went for his eyes because I didn’t want to play tug of war with my thumb in the gators mouth,’ Blackwood said. “And once I got my other hand in its eye socket the gator let go and went back into the water.”

Blackwood then drove herself to the hospital. She said she feels okay, but she is still a little sore from her encounter.

Alligator control agent Charles Carpenter caught that alligator on Thursday.

“Called in the information to the state, and the Fish and Wildlife decided that with this size, he fits the description,” Carpenter said.

The alligator is about 6-feet-9, but it is missing 12 inches of his tail, which means it is nearly eight feet long.

Ironically, Blackwood has a Ph.D. in Wildlife and Fisheries Science and her husband just got a job with FWC. The couple moved to Clearwater from Michigan last month.

Blackwood says she was looking at purchasing a house near the park the day she was bitten by the gator.

“What we heard was that this particular gator was about the only one in the lake that was not afraid of humans,” Blackwood said. “Which is a pretty good indication that people have been feeding the gators.”

Officials with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said they believe the combination of the gator’s familiarity with humans and the dog near the water triggered the attack.

Blackwood is the first person to be attacked by a gator in more than three years in Pinellas County. There have been 14 alligator attacks in Pinellas County since 1948.

The last attack, in May 2006, was a deadly one. The body of Judy Cooper, 43, was found in a canal near Oldsmar, three days after she had been attacked by an alligator.

Alligator bites in Bay area (1948-present)

County	#of bites	Most Recent
Citrus	4	May 1999
Hernando	2	July 1993
Hillsborough	11	April 2008
Manatee	5	January 2005
Pasco	11	February 2007
Pinellas	14	May 2006
Polk	24	August 2007

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LAS VEGAS — Animal control officials say a man angling for catfish at a Sunset Park lake instead reeled in a 3 1/2-foot-long alligator.

The healthy juvenile reptile was euthanized, and Clark County Animal Control Supervisor Dave March says it was probably released recently into the man-made lake. March says it couldn’t have gone unnoticed for long.

The fisherman secured the alligator with fishing line until authorities arrived.

Doug Nielsen, a Nevada Wildlife Department spokesman, says the alligator’s appearance at the lake fits a pattern.

Nielsen says people may go on vacation, see a small alligator and bring it back as a pet. But the animal can get big and aggressive – that’s when it ends up in local waters.

Importing and owning alligators is illegal in Nevada.

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Swimmer possibly attacked by alligator

JACKSON, MS (WLBT) – According to witnesses, an alligator attacked a swimmer in the Pearl River Sunday afternoon.

Fishermen at the scene said a man was swimming in the river near Laurel Street in the Belhaven Area of Jackson.

Police said the 24-year-old was with a group of friends from Clinton.

Witnesses said he unknowingly swam toward an alligator then went under the water.

The search began around three o’clock.

Rescue crews from the Jackson and Pearl Fire Departments called off the search at night fall.

Friends say they looked for the Hinds Community College student when they discovered him missing.

“By the time we got to where we had last seen him some fishermen told us that they saw him go under water and he never came back up,” said friend Brandon Johnson.

“We have fishermen who where on the bank who told us that they have seen gators in this little stretch of the river sometime this afternoon; however, it’s just too early to speculate what may have happened to the missing individual,” said Jackson Police Dept. Lt. Jeffery Scott.

Police have not released the man’s name and said the search will resume Monday morning.

According to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks web site, Mississippi has never documented an alligator attack.

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Alligator Attack Victim Facing Huge Hospital Bill

Man Attacked By Gator While Fishing Doesn’t Have Insurance, Money To Pay Bill

POSTED: 12:07 am EDT May 29, 2009

FORT PIERCE, Fla. – An Okeechobee County man survived an alligator attack, but now he has to pay his hospital bills.

 

While Antonio Prado’s physical wound heals, it’s the financial wound his family is taking that could do more damage. 

Prado has been recovering at Lawnwood Regional Medical Center since Monday — a stay that is going to cost him more than $60,000. His family members are trying to figure out how they are going to come up with the money. 

The 47-year-old father of six was fishing in a canal near Lake Okeechobee on Memorial Day and was retrieving his fishing net from the water when an alligator bit him across the arm and chest, dragging him under. 

Prado said his 24-year-old son saw his father go under, ran into the water and threw a pair of pliers at the gator’s head. The gator then released Prado, and his son pulled him out of the water. 

Trappers later removed an 11-foot alligator believed to have been responsible for the attack. 

Prado said the pain is gone and he’s ready to get out of the hospital. 

“Since he’s diabetic, they want to make sure that he doesn’t get any infections or anything, which is good,” said Prado’s daughter, Leticia Salazar. “I mean, we’d rather him be bored than something else happen.” 

However, staying another night in the hospital bed adds to the already exorbitant bill. The self-employed truck driver doesn’t have insurance and doesn’t have the money to pay out of pocket. 

“It’s over $60,000, so he’s like, ‘Oh my God,’ and that’s another thing that has him worried,” Salazar said. “But all of us say, ‘You know what? You’re safe. You’re alive. We’ll just have to worry about that later.’” 

Throughout the ordeal, his family members have been by his side, and that’s what they said they’ll continue to do. 

“Probably have to say hello to credit cards again, what else?” Salazar said. “And then pay them off, you know. Credit cards, at least you can make payments on it.” 

Prado said his physical wounds are healing very well, and doctors said they think he should be able to go home Friday. Prado said it could be weeks before he’s back to driving his truck.