Eternal enemies by their very nature, Florida man and alligator-kind are locked in a ceaseless cycle of violence destines to continue for as long as Florida still exists. So it could be like 75 more years. Nevertheless there was the briefest of amities on Wednesday when a Florida man took pity on one of the reptiles, an act of kindness that still could have cost the man a limb or two.
“I saw on our local Facebook page here for Ave Maria that someone had made a post about the alligator with the football stuck in his mouth. So I came over here, and I thought, perhaps I might have a little plan. If I could get close enough to it, I might be able to pop the football with a knife, deflate it so the gator could then just spit it out. Move on,” Collier County man Rick Green told WSVN of the possibly alcohol-related confrontation. “But I tried to get close to him, and he just wouldn’t let me anywhere close to him. So I told the wife about the plan, and she hated it.”
It’s not entirely clear from the article what actually happened next, but one way or another Green left with the football, still inflated and, more importantly, both hands and all fingers. The alligator swam off, its jaws free again unencumbered from chomping down on the limbs of another Floridian.