Gator attacks girl, says family

The Sun Herald ^ | Sun, Jul. 31, 2005

[nickcarraway]

VENICE, La. - An alligator bit a 12-year-old girl while she played with cousins in a forbidden pond near her home in Plaquemines Parish, her family says.

Ashley Brown of Venice is "up and walking around," recuperating from surgery on her hand, said her mother, Loretta Brown.

She lost the tip of one middle finger, bitten off as she tried to push the alligator away from the thigh where it bit her, and doctors grafted skin from the side of her hand to the injured finger, Brown said Friday from her daughter's hospital room at West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero.

Brown said the children had "snuck off" to play in a 4-foot-deep pond behind her uncle's house Wednesday evening, and Ashley thought at first that the underwater attack was just one of her cousins playing.

"She felt like a grip on top of her leg. She tried to get it off with her hands," Brown said.

When Ashley got out of the water, the alligator still had hold of her, Brown said.

"One of my nephews hit it with a 2-by-4 to get it away," she said.

Ashley's grandmother, Aline Perez, said the children ran into her house.

"They were all screaming. Finally, my little granddaughter held up her hand and said, 'Look, Maw Maw, an alligator bit my finger off, '" Perez said.

Perez said she washed the wounds and wrapped Ashley's hand in a towel while an ambulance was called.

Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office spokesman Col. Charles Guey said he had little information about the attack, other than a report that an ambulance was called.

Perez said her son and several others later found and shot the alligator, which she described as 7 or 8 feet long. A 7-foot alligator can bite down with a force of 1,500 to 2,000 pounds per square inch, according to a study published in 2003 by scientists at Florida State University.

[fuzzthatwuz]

"How do they figure out those dang things??"

Government grants?

[TASMANIANRED]

Are you suggesting that a published source was in error?
(sarcasm).

Don't have any gator experience but your remarks are reasonable.

[Vicomte13]

It's Bush's fault.

[Rebelbase]

More proof that environmental regulations are dangerous and kill.

[katana]

"One of my nephews hit it with a 2-by-4 to get it away,"

You gotta love southern kids. "Git off her, you slimy sumbitch!". That boy is "bona fide". Seriously, though, thank God she's alright.

[Ditter]

Alligators used to be on the endangered list. Now there should be a bounty on them.

[Junior]

Boy, is she going to have stories to tell her kids.

[brytlea]

Poor Midland, it's bad enough being in the middle of nowhere, but at least we didn't have gators or fire ants or too many yankees....I guess things change!
susie

[brytlea]

Well, ok, you got me there. Really neither one (except for the parks which filled with water when it rained....about once a year).
:)
susie

[Ditter]

Floods spread fire ants too. Maybe Midland is high and dry enough that you don't have floods.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Could be a female with babies in the area. I have no idea why the gator didn't roll, other than it was just trying to scare the kid away. Why should a gator close it's eyes underwater? Some of the ones around here actually recognize me, and will come up and pose, but stay hidden if someone else comes along. I don't feed them, they just know I won't bother them. I wouldn't test the relationship by thrashing around in the water, but wouldn't panic if I fell in the creek, except about flooding one of my cameras.
There are a lot of people, and a lot of gators, every so often there is going to be a misunderstanding. The kid is old enough to know the rules, I am pleased she lived through the final lesson.
http://photobucket.com/albums/v244/tsiya/

[OESY]

Ashley will be more careful when she opens the front door next time.
"Never trust a strange aligator," her mother always said.

[Vote 4 Nixon]

I know what you mean. A few weeks ago my wife and I were on a boating trip up the altamaha river here in Ga. We were just taking our time taking it easy sight seeing. I pulled the boat up on shore and tied it off cause I wanted to show my wife a lake back in the woods just off the main river. We hiked back to the lake but it got some kind of hot in those woods. we decided to get in the lake just to cool off, didn't do the back stroke or anything. Stayed in there probably 15 mins got out and walked back to the boat and resumed our trip up river. A few days later at work me and one of my buddies were talking about the river and he told me that he had been to that exact same spot with his brother a few weeks earlier and had seen the biggest alligator he had ever seen sunning itself on the shore of that lake. Talk about having cold shivers running up your spine. I have had the willies ever since. We could have been alligator shit.

[brytlea]

We were always told it was too dry for them to colonize there.
susie

[ZULU]

Maybe they should use some of those Congresscritters for bait.

[fuzzthatwuz]

"Maybe they should use some of those Congresscritters for bait.'

Can't do that, they would get indigestion... would not want to stir up PETA!

[DUMBGRUNT]

Now the folks around south Louisiana
Said Amos was a hell of a man
He could trap the biggest, the meanest alligator
And just use one hand
That's all he got left cause an alligator bit it
Ha ha ha