Eric Merda, of Sarasota, was sent to the hospital after the attack at the Lake Manatee Fish Camp in the US state of Myakka on July 17. Now out of hospital and adjusting to life without his arm, he spoke of the terrifying incident which saw him mauled by the alligator and left wandering around lost for three days. Speaking in an interview, he said that he encountered the lake and decided to swim it instead of walking it. “I looked over and there’s a piper on my right hand, so I went to swim, and she got my forearm, so I grabbed her, she was trying to roll over, but she broke her head, so my hand went. backwards… completely,” Mr Merda said. He says he had to fight for his life. “He dragged me down, three times. He already got my arm, so when we went up the third time, he finally did a death roll and took off with my arm.” He managed to get out of the lake, but then spent three days trying to find his way back. “You can’t see anything … sometimes I felt like I was walking in circles, I didn’t know,” he said. “So I started following the sun and power lines, things like that, things I could see.” After three days in the swamp, he says he stumbled upon a fence and a man on the other side. “I said ‘hey man I need help’ and he says ‘what are you doing’ and I said ‘a gator took my arm.’ Now she’s adjusting to a new normal with a new perspective… and she’s got some gator-based advice. “Don’t feed the getters well and you know who you are, you throw rocks at them and stuff, I’ve seen it on construction sites, leave the getters alone,” he said.
