Man walking his dog is attacked by alligator

Mark Johnson is lucky to tell the tale.

The 61-year-old Florida artist was attacked by an alligator behind his Port St. Lucie home over the weekend, TC Palm first reported.

Johnson said he was walking his dog Rex by a canal near his house around 9:30 a.m. Sept. 13 when he noticed an alligator at the water’s edge. Then the gator noticed them and lunged.

Johnson yelled for Rex, a golden retriever, to get on home, and he obeyed.

As for the man, his shoe — a Croc sandal — got stuck in the mud and the gator grabbed a hold of his leg. Johnson wrestled with the gator on the ground, and was able to poke it in the eye with two fingers. That’s when it released its ferocious grip and swam away.

“I’m still in disbelief that the gator lunged at me like he did,” the bite victim told the Miami Herald on Wednesday. “I’m a native Floridian, been around these things my whole life, and this would have been the last thing I would ever expected.”

Johnson says poking the large reptile in the eye was the only option, and he’s thankful it worked.

“He was in the stage where he was about to go into his [death] roll, that would have made the situation a lot worse,” the Winter Garden native said of the spinning maneuver to subdue prey. “It’s a story most folks should know about, especially in South Florida.”

Johnson, who estimated the beast to be around nine feet long, received about 60 stitches in his leg plus another five in the index finger on his left hand.

He contacted the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, but a nuisance trapper was unable to locate the alligator, Johnson told the Miami Herald.

“A contracted nuisance alligator trapper was dispatched to the location,” the FWC confirmed to the Herald, adding the incident is being investigated.

Outdoors photographer Ed Killer posted a picture of the man and his injuries on Facebook, saying Johnson “survived a near miss.”

To report a nuisance alligator, call FWC’s Nuisance Alligator Hotline at 866-392-4286.