‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ not applicable to alligators (or seals)
Wallace Weatherholt, 63, an Everglades airboat tour guide, was arrested minus his left hand by Florida wildlife officers on Friday and charged with the unlawful feeding of an alligator. He was released from the Collier County Jail after posting a $1,000 bond. If convicted, he could face up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.
Good old Wally, who works for Captain Doug’s Everglades Tours in Everglades City, was taking an Indiana family on a tour of the Everglades when he decided to dangle a fish on the surface of the water. Whoosh-Chomp, both fish and hand were gone, snapped up by a 9-foot alligator.
One of the tourists on board the boat told reporters that the alligator managed to get its two front feet onto the deck and she was worried the airboat — carrying herself, two other women and two young children — was going to tip over.
After the bug-eyed Indiana folks finished puking, Weatherholt was rushed to a hospital. Wildlife officers were able to find the scaly culprit, killed him and retrieved Wally’s hand. They rushed the severed hand to the hospital, but doctors were unable to reattach it to Wally’s now stubby left arm.
Wally’s story reminds me of way back when my wife and I visited Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. Among the exhibits at that theme park was a pool containing several seals. They had a fish vending machine from which visitors could get fish to feed the seals – if I remember right, it was for a quarter. I bought one, leaned over the retaining wall and dangled the fish several feet above the water.
Woosh-Ouch, the son-of-a-bitch snatched that fish out of my hand in the blink of an eye, biting one of my fingers in the process. When the Knott’s Berry Farm people took me to the first aid station, my wife insisted that she did not know me.
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