That's first fatal alligator attack in Texas ever.
ADDED: Here's Wikipedia's "List of fatal alligator attacks in the United States by decade," which says, "This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it." That last phrase is ominously ambiguous, suggesting that you, like the recently departed Tommie Woodward, could expand the list by ignoring a "No Swimming/Alligators" sign. All but one of the other attacks happened in Florida, including this one that happened, of all days, on September 11, 2001:
Robert Steele, 81, male ...Attacked by an alligator while walking his dog on a trail between two wetland areas near the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel, Florida. Steele bled to death after his leg was bitten off below the knee.How strange it must have been for families who lost loved ones on 9/11 to causes of death other than the terrorist attacks. From a contemporaneous news article:
Ellen Steele, 81, thought her husband was drowning in the canal when she heard his screams. She pulled him as far up the canal's bank as she could before calling 911. "We live among alligators. We protect them. They have never attacked us before," she said.America is immersed in its disbelief: We didn't expect the terrorists to attack. And Ellen Steele has her vastly smaller but not entirely dissimilar shock: They have never attacked us before.
Wildlife officials spotted the alligator less than an hour later and shot it in the head. "We saw it surface on the other bank with the leg in his mouth," said [Sanibel Police Cmdr. Bill] Tomlinson.We spotted bin Laden 10 years later and shot him in the head.
I was considering making some humor out of al Qaeda/al Ligator, but I'll just give you this little clip of the time "Curb Your Enthusiasm" made humor out of the predicament of losing a loved one on 9/11 but not to the terrorist attacks:
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21 comments:
The JP thinks the lesson here is always obey the government.
Some friends lived in Naples, FL and had neighbors across the street whose house was next to a bayou with gators. Their screened deck extended over the water and guests would toss Hors d'oeuvres to the gators below from cocktail parties. Nobody got attacked but nobody walked by the bayou. Gators love dogs so you have to be careful about them, too.
THe real world is full of potential self-ctiiquing choices. Darwin had a phrase for that, I think.
"This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it."
ummmm......no thanks!!
Alligator attacks are a little like lightening strikes; pretty rare, but just one can ruin your whole day.
I doubt that the alligator cared that the guy mocked them.
I'd rather be killed by a shark than an alligator. There's so much more dignity to being eaten by a shark, and it's probably a quicker death.....Being hunted down and killed by a marauding pack of dingo dogs is probably the worst, but fortunately it's never happened.
Orange Texas is right near Tex/LA border and shares the same bayou eco-system...might as well be in Louisiana...definitely NOT the Texas plains..
Reptile politics
"America is immersed in its disbelief: We didn't expect the terrorists to attack. And Ellen Steele has her vastly smaller but not entirely dissimilar shock: They have never attacked us before. "
They think that suddenly they have a constitutional right to gay marriage even though they don't. They think women are actually men simply because they have a feeling, and take hormones despite having the same chromosomes. They think actual things are social constructs.
you're right, America is immersed in its disbelief.
This is almost always a disbelief of lefties by the way. People who think animals are the same as humans, and who are members of PETA are almost always of the left. People who are conservative would very likely know that alligators are wild animals and can kill you. If they don't heed the warning they are simply not caring about the result. It's not like they don't know the result can't happen.
"I asked him please do not go swimming, there's a bigger alligator out here, just please stay out of the water," Wright, an employee at the restaurant, said.
Workers report they spotted a ten-foot gator in the waters of Adams Bayou this week, prompting them to post a warning sign reading "No Swimming Alligators."
Investigators said Woodward didn't pay attention to the posted warnings and pleas from Wright.
"He said blank the alligators and thereupon jumped into the water," Orange County Justice of the Peace Rodney Price said
Another Southern male victim of "Hey, Y'all! Watch this!"
Had a hipster SWPL acquaintance who shucked & jived with some nasty urban hoodrats for a while. I asked him about that and he told me he was part of the local eco-system, so no worries. Strutted around the Cass corridor mpervious to his surroundings. His buds stomped him half to death one night. Never saw it coming cuz he didn't want to see it coming.
"Someone shouted a warning and he said blank the alligators."
Well, only makes sense, I guess.
When it comes to toothy alligators, obviously a blowjob is out of the question.
Yet again another example of Heinlein's aphorism in action.
A national wildlife refuge named for an editorial cartoonist--what will they think of next?
http://www.dingdarling.org/cartoons/fourth.html
I vacation in Sanibel for two months each year. The story I heard was that since Steele's death occurred on 9/11, it got lost in the news locally since it hadn't happened before. Then several years later, a female environmental activist was doing yard work near a waterway and got attacked and dragged into the water where a tug of war occurred between bystanders and the alligator. Eventually she was pulled to safety and flown to a hospital where she died from infections. Because she was well known locally, there was an uproar and the Sanibel City Council decided to allow hired guns to trap (kill?) gators over 4'....and the gator hunters got a lot of them as the rest of Florida allowed people to trap/kill gators over 4' while Sanibel allowed only gators over 8' to be removed as an environmental policy. But since a major amount of Sanibel's waterways are in preserves, a lot are still there. A single Croc nested on a ladies lot for years and when it died, the city had a memorial service that year and another service a year later.
"Why did he do it?" I am guessing he had beer arrogance/muscles.
And the alligators said,"No, son, fuck you. We're alligators.
That was one brave girl who jumped in to try to help him.
Re: 9/11 deaths, my grandmother died early on the morning of 9/12/01 (from natural causes). We drove six hours to her funeral the next day. That was a pretty tough trip to take.
Why'd he do it? I'd imagine 'Alcohol may have been involved.'
I'd imagine the list is incomplete for the same reason the actual list of shark attacks is incomplete: if someone just disappears, who knows what actually happened?
I'm sure the sign read to him, "Rednecks Welcome!"
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