Eric Merda usually doesn’t have a lot of free time between calls for irrigation services, but on July 17th he had a much looser schedule and was trying to fill a few hours.
He decided to explore a manatee fish camp near his place of work. He ended up in a swamp near Sarasota, Florida, where he lives.
His downtime that summer Sunday turned into what he described as a nightmare survival story. After a crocodile bit off his right arm, he suffered naked and alone for four days and he three nights in the swamp.
“I challenged the swamp,” Melda, 43, said Wednesday. Mostly recovered and ready to share details of his ordeal. “The swamp challenged me.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is investigating the attack, spokeswoman Tammy Sapp said.
A pesky alligator trapper exterminated two alligators, 6 and 9 feet long, from Lake Manatee on July 21, she said.
According to Melda’s account, he started out exploring the swamps, but the heat became so intense that he became parched. For many Floridians, the danger of alligators was no stranger to him, but he decided the best way to find his way back to his car was to jump into Lake Manatee.
Spanning about two square miles, the lake is a man-made reservoir created in the middle of the last century.A state park located along part of its coast Be aware that it is a crocodile habitat.
Within minutes of entering the water, he noticed that his clothes were dragging him and he threw them off.
And he saw an alligator parallel to him in the water less than two feet away.
He tried to swim away, but the animal was faster, he said. It got caught in his right forearm and the two fought, the animal pulling him under him three times before bending his forearm backwards. It flew off his elbow and the crocodile swam away with his forearm and hand in his mouth.
Melda struggled to the shore in pain, and no doubt in shock. He fought disorientation and tried to keep going. He slept the best he could when he could, but he returned to the coastline to avoid getting lost any further.
“I kept getting lost in the grass,” he said. “I was terrified to go back into that water, but I had to. I didn’t know if there was any other way out of it.”
At some point, the bleeding in my arm stopped, but I knew I wasn’t feeling well. And in a scene worthy of a horror movie, he turned around and said, “Alligators keep popping up all over the place.”
He said he leaned over the stump for a while, hoping someone would find him, but eventually decided to hang on. When his body could move no more, he rested.
“There were many times I couldn’t keep up — a lot,” he said. “Of course, it got worse and worse as the days got longer. On that last day, if I had to guess, I must have moved only 100 yards that last day.”
Flies swarmed his limbs. His ROTC his training taught him that he needed to wear a tourniquet on his arm, but he had nothing to do with it. He was amputated for walking through thorns. His back was attacked by red ants. Cleaned purple flowers became his diet. he drank from the lake
Melda’s family and friends began noticing something was wrong when he wasn’t posting on Facebook, and called local hospitals to try and find him.
Rescue finally arrived on July 20, reaching the fence of the Manatee Lake fish camp and finding the man. The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and Manatee County Emergency Medical Service responded.
A helicopter safely evacuated him and he spent three weeks at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. His doctors also amputated many of his arms because they were infected, he said.
Melda’s story of an unusual ordeal was the latest alligator attack to come to the attention of the new organization this year.
In May, a 47-year-old man retrieving a Frisbee from a lake in a public park became the first Florida man since 2019 to die after being attacked by an alligator. Another alligator attack in South Carolina killed her 88-year-old woman in her head at the Hilton in August.
On the same July day that Melda lost her arm, an 80-year-old woman died after being attacked by two alligators after falling into a pond near her home in Inglewood, Florida.
In states with high alligator populations, including Florida and Louisiana, people are at risk whenever they are near bodies of water and should be as careful to avoid attacks as they are to prevent drowning. A university student in wildlife ecology and conservation, he has worked with alligators and crocodiles in the Everglades for 40 years.
Since 2010, 6 and 15 unprovoked crocodile bites reported Annual by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. In 2021 there will be a total of nine, none fatal. There have been 22 reported bite incidents in 2022, but not all will be counted depending on whether they are determined to have been induced.
Experts recommend swimming only in designated, safe areas and keeping pets on a leash. And don’t feed the alligators. According to Professor Masotti, animals are not usually hunting when they attack humans simply because humans are usually too big. Rather, most attacks occur because alligators feel their territory is being eroded.
The crocodile population is now “healthy,” and as property development expands, humans may be more likely to be exposed to animals, he said. The Fish and Wildlife Commission administers a service called the Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program to exterminate alligators that are considered a threat to people, pets, or property.
But when an attack does occur, you have few options. “If you’re in the alligator’s mouth and it won’t let go, fight as if your life depends on it,” Professor Mazzotti said. “Because you do.”
As for Mr. Merda, he’s moving forward. “He’s thanking God every day for giving him the chance to get through it,” he said.
His seven children are coping with his condition better than he expected, he said. replied, “Papa had to beat the crocodile.”
He’s feeling so much better physically that he’s about to resume his job as a motivational speaker.
He also said he had a newfound respect for his own resilience, and admitted to feeling somewhat fearless — almost at fault.
“Fear is good,” he said.