Dances with Gators

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CBulla

~..facebook conch..~
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Fort Myers, Florida -Resident Oranguman
Well, here we go again...

Posted on Tue, Sep. 28, 2004
Georgia woman drowns after alligator attack in Fort Myers
Associated Press

FORT MYERS, Fla. - A Georgia university student drowned after an alligator bit off part of her right arm while she apparently went skinny-dipping in a lake, an autopsy found.

The autopsy was performed Monday, a day after the body of Michelle Reeves, 20, of Roswell, was found floating face down in a lake near the Cypress Cove development.

Reeves was a junior English major at Georgia State University in Atlanta and an amateur poet.

"She was the kind of person who would go swimming at 2 in the morning. She was a free spirit in the best sense of the word," said Paul J. Voss, an associate professor of literature at Georgia State.

Her right arm was bitten off at the elbow, and she also had puncture wounds on her left arm and upper body. She was last seen at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, when she went to bed, officials said.

Her father couldn't find her about Sunday morning. While searching for her, he found his daughter's nightgown near the lake. He later found her body after calling sheriff's deputies.

An alligator was trapped and removed from the area Sunday.

"They performed an on-scene necropsy and they did find body parts in the stomach of the alligator," said Jo Anne Adams, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
 
Anyone keeping a tally as far as frequency of alligator attacks vs. shark attacks in areas where they both are found? I'd bet that the gators would win hands down. :jaws:
 
scubafool:
Anyone keeping a tally as far as frequency of alligator attacks vs. shark attacks in areas where they both are found? I'd bet that the gators would win hands down. :jaws:


FATALITY RATE: ALLIGATOR ATTACKS = 3.6% SHARK ATTACKS = 1.5%


Well, not quite hands down. It seems that while there are a fair amount more shark attacks in Florida then alligator attacks, there are more fatalities from gators then sharks, but not by much. All in all the total fatalities are quite low anyway

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/attacks/relariskgator.htm



Go to this link for more stats and to compare shark attacks to other animals.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/attacks/relarisk.htm
 
Seems as though FL is one DANGEROUS place to live. Oh well, I like it here anyhow.

BTW, that was just the info i was looking for. Thanks.
 
I dive in the ACE Basin in South Carolina - alligators are very common. What I have found is that the gators that are still in the "wild" state (where we most often dive)are in most cases harmless to divers. On the other hand, there are gators who live adjacent to a populated area, people begin feeding them and they lose their fear of people and begin associating them with food....especially if there are small pets in the area. On one occasion, DNR captured a nuisance gator from a neighborhood pond and released him in the area where we often dive....he was a little too "friendly"....yes, a diver can re-enter the boat from the water....in full gear.... without the aid of a ladder....it wasn't pretty.
 

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