Staring down an alligator in the wild is the stuff of nightmares.
Getting into a struggle with one is a risky bet.
And a Florida woman pulled off one daring move in a scary fight with an alligator.
Florida woman saves her dog from the jaws of an alligator
Kim Spencer was taking her dog, Kona, on her evening walk in Tampa Bay, Florida when she ran into an alligator.
A six-and-a-half-foot alligator emerged from a pond and began to head toward them.
Spencer tried to make a break for it, but the dog wanted to stand her ground.
“I saw the eyes. I saw it turning itself around towards us, and I started pulling Kona away, saying, ‘Let’s go.’ But she’s a really strong dog,” Spencer told Fox 13. “She’s facing it, it’s facing her, and it suddenly jumped at her and got her. So she was in all the way up to here, like her whole head in its mouth.”
The dog’s head and shoulder were in the mouth of the alligator.
Spencer was left with a choice.
She decided to risk it all to save her beloved pooch.
“[I] jumped on it, straddled it, as ladylike as that is, and was trying to pry its jaws open,” Spencer recalled. “Its back was to me, so it made me just jump on.”
The dog owner was able to free Kona after prying the alligator’s jaws open.
“We just got lucky because it ran,” Spencer said. “Just as quickly as it ran after us it went right back in the water and I got up and we were out of there.”
She said that the situation happened so fast that she operated on instinct.
Florida woman and her dog live to tell the tale
Spencer and Kona managed to escape the scary encounter without any serious injuries.
The dog has to wear a cone on her head after some stitches while Spencer has her hand stitched up.
“We’re empty nesters, she’s my baby, so I wasn’t ready to take on that mindset that she’s an animal versus a human,” Spencer said.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said that alligator attacks are extremely rare.
Only 11 alligator bites were reported last year.
Florida is estimated to have more than 1.3 million alligators in the state.
Spencer warned that what she went through could happen to someone else.
“It could easily happen, and you might not be that lucky to get your child or your pet,” Spencer stated. “Many people say they are more afraid of us than we are of them, clearly not the case.”
Fish and Wildlife sent a trapper to remove the alligator from the pond.
Spencer said that she has had Kona for eight years after she adopted the lab mix.
“I hope she understands that she’ll be okay and that we hate that she’s in pain,” Spencer said. “I would never let anything happen to her.”
Kimberly Spencer risked it all to save her dog from the jaws of a gator.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
