Tony Aarts’ shot left his ball resting near the hole at Magnolia Landing Golf & Country Club in North Fort Myers. He grabbed his putter and walked past a water hazard toward the green. Then he heard a splash. Aarts assumed a golfer behind him hit without waiting for him to move Then he saw the alligator. “He was coming right at me. Just, boom,” Aarts recalled of the February day in 2017. The gator grabbed Aarts’ right foot and began pulling him into the water. Aarts dug his left foot into the mud, a futile attempt to slow the gator down. He clubbed the gator in the head with his putter. No use. The gator relented only after Aarts began bashing its eye. The golfer suffered only minor injuries to his foot. He was one of 12 people bitten by an alligator in Florida in 2017, and one of 410 people bitten since the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission began keeping track in 1948. Twenty-five of those attacks were fatal. And although alligator attacks are rare, this is the time of year when the reptiles are most active. With the weather warming and their hormones hopping during mating season, which usually starts in April, alligators have been popping up all over Florida in recent weeks.
Alligator and Sharks encounters are on the rise, Maybe they really like the taste of humans!
