There was no word Friday night on the condition of the Fripp Island golfer who lost his arm in an alligator attack Thursday. The man, in his 70's, was taken to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston with hopes of getting his arm re-attached.
Around 3 pm Thursday, the man reached for his golf ball while golfing on Fripp Island and was pulled into a lagoon by a 10-foot-gator.
There's sort of a standard operating procedure when a professional gator catcher gets on the scene.
"We cast and we actually fight them like a fish and get them close enough to get a pole with a snare around him and drag him up,” Dave Corneliussen of Tracks Wildlife said.
But Thursday, besides getting a 10-foot gator Dave Corneliussen had a brand new duty.
"On the way out there we were told that the limb of a gentleman was in the alligator. We dissected the alligator and removed it. We cut it out of the alligator - it was in his stomach,” Corneliussen said.
The Department of Natural Resources has staff dedicated to educating South Carolinians and tourists on how to act in the presence of an alligator. They say Thursday's event was especially rare.
"Humans are not necessarily in the food chain and, for the most part, attacks are very rare. This is like the 2nd that I’m aware of in the 25 years I’ve been here,” DNR’s Lt. Robert McCullough said.
But with ones so big lurking in the Lowcountry, it's crucial to know and play the ropes of gator safety.
“It’s an animal. You respect it and the bigger ones—the bigger they get the more distance you probably want to put in them,” McCullough said.
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