Monday's fatal alligator attack on an 85-year-old Florida woman is a rare event but experts say residents should always use caution near bodies of water especially when walking their pets.
Officials said the elderly woman was walking her dog in a senior living community in Fort Pierce when a nearly 11-foot gator attacked the pet.
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She was killed while saving the dog from the gator. Officials said the dog survived the attack and the gator was later caught and removed from the community by a trapper.
The woman was identified Tuesday as Gloria Serge.
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"I just turned and I saw that Gloria was being attacked by a gator that had come out of the water and had her leg," said neighbor Carol Thomas, who called 911 and tried to help Serge during the attack. "I asked her to swim toward the boat, swim toward the boat to give her something and she said, 'I can’t, the alligator has me.'"
ZooMiami Wildlife expert Ron Magill said attacks like Monday's are "extremely rare" but do happen.
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"These are opportunistic feeders. They normally will use an ambush type of method where they stay close to shore and wait for something to come close enough to shore where they can then jump out very quickly which unfortunately is what happened in this instance," Magill said. "I’m sure that alligator was intentionally going after the dog and maybe in an effort to save her dog, this thing ended so tragically."
Magill said there are steps that can be taken to mitigate gator attacks.
"First of all, I always tell people never, ever walk your pet along any body of water," Magill said. "These alligators are not malicious animals. They are not looking at a human saying 'I want to come after this human being' but they will look at small pets and not be able to decipher between them and their natural food, be it a raccoon, possum, duck or whatever."
Magill said it's especially dangerous to walk around the bodies of water around sunrise or sunset.
“If an alligator grabs your pet there’s not much you can do. Do not go into the water after that alligator," he said. "You’ll probably see the video of the man that saved his little dog but that was a much smaller alligator. This was a huge animal, over 10 feet is my understanding, unfortunately the tragedy is that you’ve lost your pet’s life but don’t magnify the tragedy by losing your own life."
Magill said you should also never feed alligators.
“It is against the law to feed an alligator and the reason for that is not because the FWC doesn’t want you to make an alligator happy and healthy, it’s because they don’t want to have that alligator lose it’s natural fear of humans and then associate the humans with food," he said.
"Alligator Ron" Bergeron, an environmentalist and businessman, echoed Magill's advice.
"Well I’ve lived with alligators my whole life. As a matter of fact, my only neighbors are alligators," he said. "But to be safe with alligators, and we can coexist with them, if you’re walking your dog, stay safely away from the shoreline. They will come after dogs as they resemble wildlife. And make sure you never feed an alligator.”
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, between 1948 and 2021 there have been 442 unprovoked alligator bites on humans, including 26 fatalities. The chances of a person in Florida being injured in an unprovoked alligator attack is about one in 3.1 million, according to the commission.
Once on the endangered species list, the alligator has recovered to the point that wildlife officials estimate the Florida population at more than 1.3 million animals.
"They really don’t want anything to do with humans which is why more often than not when there is an alligator attack we end up finding a dead body, but they don’t find a dead body that’s been eaten. It’s usually a mistaken identity," Magill said. "Unless an alligator is protecting a nest, it’s not going to want to have anything to do with you. They will look at you, keep your distance and respect them. If you properly learn to respect these animals, you will never have a reason to be afraid."
A number of gator attacks have been reported in recent years, including a handful in 2022.
Last May, a man who was searching for frisbees in a lake at a disc golf course in Largo was killed by a gator.
In June, a man's dog was eaten by a gator while he played with the unleashed pet at a Tallahassee park.
Also in June, a woman in Plantation was able to fight a gator off after she found her pet dog in the gator's mouth.
In July, a woman was found dead after she was seen falling into a pond at at golf course in Englewood. Witnesses said two alligators grabbed her after she fell into the water.
In August, a Florida firefighter was swimming in a lake near Tampa while shooting a video for his outdoor adventure company when he was brutally attacked by a gator. The firefighter, who said his entire head and torso were inside the 12-foot gator's mouth, spent 10 days in the hospital but survived the attack.
One of the most tragic gator attacks in recent years happened in 2016, when 2-year-old Lane Graves was killed by an alligator as he was vacationing with his family from Nebraska at Walt Disney World.
