Florida Alligator Man - Tooth & Claw

Story. It's one of the oldest stories we have. One day the scorpion asks a frog if you 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. You know I had to. And we tell. Like we're reasonable. Betrayed by the other. Call animals. And everything.

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 survive know. Deep in the ancestral memory of a hawk or a wolf or an alligator lies a warning about us. About what happens when you let one of us get close, but sometimes. thus wanders too far from the road. It's out. the fences into a place where we're not in charge anymore. When something that's been running from us. Hiding from us.

For a hundred generations finally sees its chance, and then one day We find out.

Today is that day. Snap Judgment probably presents the tooth and claw deep dive for the alligator man. Us and them walking. The snap. 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 in that cool, white, pottery sand, but of course, our Florida store. His name is Eric Murda. And for some time. Eric was having a hard time relaxing his mind. He's searching for a little bit of peace.

And today's story does conclude. Listeners should I was sleeping in my van even though I had money and could get hotel rooms and things like that. I I didn't see any reason like once or twice a week to get a good night's sleep and a shower and things like that. I like to sleep. 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. I've got nothing to do. So why why not start picking up some garbage and helping clean up the earth? This gave me an opportunity to do 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. 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. kinda 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. For the first time in my life I was like completely alone. Definitely at a low point in my life. 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 of a sudden nothing. I mean just trying to bring any kind of light into my dark world that I possibly could.

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. I was doing uh sprinklers and um 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 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. I go inside and when I come back out, there's a lot of ticket on the ground to scratch off.

Uh scratched it off as a fifty dollar t 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. There was brush on the other side of the room.

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 packed through the wood. 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 so I'm getting cut up already.

I finally came to a a big open area and I kept looking at them woods. I kept looking at'em I'm like, man, I wanna go have some fun. I guess I'd 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.

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. Because 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. I got so far into there that I didn't know how to get out. I 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 a another open area or something like that 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.

I wandered around for roughly another three hours or so. I didn't really know where I was going or what I was doing. I seen some really tall grasses that I 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. So then I pushed myself through the grasses. That's when I came out to the water side. 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 together. I just do it, just make it.

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. Yeah, I 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. Was like a mile and a half. I felt really confident in my ability to be able to make it across. 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. The boots were a representation of my work. So I I grabbed onto those things like they were my life. I refused to let'em go. And I was like, Man, you're you're gonna drown if you don't you know, I'm I'm having this big internal struggle.

So I dropped the boot. 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 I had to drop the pants. Once all that was gone i it was pretty easy to swim. When I was finally naked in the water and 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. Oh I don't wanna say it was getting further away, but you know, when it's not getting closer, it's getting further. 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

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 yeah, just stay cool.

I'm just like kind of hanging out, floating on my back and swimming around and I was just like the heck with it man. I'm gonna 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 kind of 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 remind me of an alligator, I did take it as a sign. You know, the cosmos has a way of speaking to you sometimes. 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. 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 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. 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 lay damn there's teeth in my arm.

At that point, out of pure instinct, I rolled over and grabbed the alligator with my other arm. They start spinning around. Yeah. 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 kind of rough like leathery. What happened next because I was holding on to the ribs of the alligator it tried to take me underwater and then the 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 I was feeling like I was gonna drown at that point. I'm underneath there suffocating, uh I'm back up above the water. And I'm back underneath like the second I could get a breath.

When I would push the alligator up from the water a 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 I would swear that I d 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. I remember everything turning black for a millisecond. The alligator just kind of vanished. I don't know if he went underwater.

My first thought was like that arm's gone. I I knew that was definitely done with that. It threw me in a serious state of paranoia. Once it was gone, it was gone. Th 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 eleven thirty at night. It's pitch dark out. There's no street lights where I'm hanging out at. I was in the wrong part of town.

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. Swimming with one arm um for the first time and losing my arms is li like ten 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? I just kept looking forward, trying to get out of there, scared out of my mind. Paddling as h 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 I was worried about a lot of other body parts too. It wasn't just my arm.

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 pri midnight, maybe one o'clock at night, and I'm laying there just waiting to see the grass start parting and the alligator Coming through the through the swamp and through those grasses. Very unsettling. 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. Set in I was at the tree stump less than an hour before I Passing out. We'll return. He might be out of the water, but Eric is definitely not out of the woods.

Can he avoid an alligator that smells blood? Stay tuned. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Florida Alligator Man. Claw, when last we left, Eric Murda 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.

That night after falling asleep, I slept for ten to eleven hours. When I woke up in the morning around eleven o'clock or so, I 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. 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. Yeah, you know, and and then I was like I'm just gonna give up and the next question came, why? 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 get you don't even know why you wouldn't give up. You know, I decided I was gonna go deal with it.

As I looked up, I seen the helicopter coming. The only thing I knew to do was try to wave it down. I shimmied 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 there 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. 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. The sooner you start, the faster this is gonna happen. 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 was I said I cannot do this 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. I did not want to 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.

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 it was like the roots had 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 i it was the only thing I had to hold on to. As I'm walking the shelf, I turn around and within a couple hundred feet, here's this alligator that is definitely watching me. As far as I'm concerned, it was the same one. 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.

Um 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. 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.

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 want to 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. Or keep going and get out of there as fast as I could. And you know you know, the best choice was to just turn my back and keep going.

My main focus was get the heck on outta this water. I felt like I could walk that whole shoreline and get back to my van before it got dark out. 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 l lifting'em and holding'em and hugging'em. I was always th like a jungle gym to the kids. I 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. We all like to feel like we're needed, especially by our children. And and that's where I'm supposed to be at in my life. And my kids are supposed to need me. And I I needed them. I 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 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 ninety-nine percent of why I'm probably getting through this and why I am surviving. Whether I knew it or not, the kids were a huge drop. I never lost hope in my life before. Well hope is a son of a gun. 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. Um, maybe part of a dam or something. And I 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. It's now daylight out. So I 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 I feel like I'm going in circles and I looked up at the sun and decided I I was gonna just follow the sun.

The grasses are so high I you can't see through'em. I can't see straight. The only thing I could see was the sky. So I 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 f 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

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. After the break.

Welcome back to Snap Judgment. My name is Gun Washington, and before the break, Eric was beginning his third straight day trapped in the swamp. He hasn't eaten, barely slept, and has been following some power lines, hoping they can lead him. him somewhere. Snap judgment. 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 y 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. I'm cut. Yeah. I've been like this for a couple of days now. I just absolutely hurtin' it and the thought of 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

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. 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 and 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 have got through'em though either.

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. 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 and take another break. There was one point in time where I sat still for at least a half an hour. And I was dumbfounded. 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 can see around me and trying to figure out like how am I gonna get outta here? I'm laying there on my back, absolutely stuck, not no way out. 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're gonna lay here 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. 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 I don't even know how much pain I would have felt. I was still in the thick of the brush.

I was actually uh 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 the 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 to know for a fact that listen. A road has to be close. After seeing the beer bottle It took me quite some time to even make the next 10 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 10 to 15 feet I could see the fence.

I push on and push 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 I'm like screaming. And as far as I can tell he can't hear me screaming. Looks like he's getting ready to go. 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 now I'm screaming.

and screaming um 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 he didn't see my arm missing and m my exact words were, dude, I lost my arm to an alligator. And he said, Holy shit And then he he asked me if he could get me anything. I was like, I want some water. I w I want a clean bottle of water. This guy gets me a couple bottles of water and I drank both of'em pretty quickly too. It tasted like I was saved.

With me being able to finally relax, I just laid there and closed my eyes. I broke out into 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.

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. The whole thing is very emotional, ex spiritual experience.

I consider me getting dunked under water, like a baptism by nature out there, uh 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.

After the helicopter lands at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, I meet the doctor and I I believe within like five minutes I'm out. Like whatever they gave me anesthesia and 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 uh the water Bacteria in the soil, infections, the it just it it ate so much of my arm that he had to take the whole thing.

After the operation, I was laying in the in the hospital bed. All I wanted to do was see my kids at this point. You know, it was why I survived, I think. Yeah, you know, kids are at Even though they they could survive without me and they didn't need their dad, um, I'm sure they like having him around. And I I like being around them. When I finally got to see my kids, I'm looking at the kids and like Then I really know how to react to that, like I've been like

you know, probably four or 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'em. 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 ja just having a good old time with him like I would with two.

Yeah, you know, don't drop the baby. You know, I I did almost drop him, but um yeah, he wanted to climb, he wanted to play, he wanted to do what me and him do. New this evening we are hearing for the first time from that guy who lost his arm in an alligator. Yeah. He hopes to be fitted with a price. Now he's a With a new perspective. I I was very grateful for the amount of people who who came in there and seen me.

It it definitely did help me get back in contact with with family and friends. Um lot a lot of friends I hadn't seen in years that wanted to come and see me and send me their best. I I had a buddy, he worked at a local fish market and um He asked me what I wanted to eat. And I was like, I want some gator bites. Um w which is uh typically gator tail fried up like chicken nuggets. And he he's like, Really? You want But yeah, it's the next one.

So he he's he said, 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 I gotta have some gator bites. The snap. No sense of getting out of the house. Sharing his experience. And also as a motivational. Capjudgment.org The original score for this piece was by Nick Marks. Old snappers. But one episode of snap. San Francisco is the first time. Mr. Mark Ristich.

Just a hero of the No Snap Studios content. For training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on Team Snap. The union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIL, local. fifty one and But you would still Not be as far away from the floor.