How a Florida woman escaped from the jaws of a 400-pound alligator

Rachél Thompson didn’t notice the danger below until it was too late.

After a half-hour of exercise to start the Fourth of July, Thompson waded into the shallows of the Hillsborough River for a bit of relief from the suffocating Florida heat. She crouched down to immerse herself, stood up and put one foot on a rock to climb back to shore.

What a beautiful and peaceful morning, she recalled thinking as she glanced at the ripples atop the water.

“All of a sudden the ripples become the top of a giant alligator head just from nowhere,” Thompson, 46, said.

It was less than six inches away, far too close for an escape. The gator attacked, sinking its teeth into her right calf and then dragging her from shore.

Having lived next to gators for years, Thompson knew what was coming if this one pulled her into deeper waters - the death roll, a move in which an alligator rapidly spins to subdue and dismember its prey. If that happened, as the name suggested, there was little chance she would survive.

“I knew this was what I was headed for,” she said.

It’s a fear that looms large in the minds of Floridians but rarely occurs: an alligator attack. Officials estimate that about 1.3 million American alligators live throughout Florida. Despite their numbers, the state each year has averaged eight unprovoked bites requiring professional medical attention over the past decade. But as the Sunshine State’s population explodes and residents seek waterfront homes, officials warn of an increased risk of conflict between alligators and people.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials said they are investigating Thompson’s gator attack but that a report about the incident has not been finished.

Thompson, 46, moved into her house on the Hillsborough River six years ago. Since then, she and many of her neighbors in unincorporated Hillsborough County next to Temple Terrace, Fla., had enjoyed a relationship of “peaceful social distancing” with the wildlife around them.

That included Thompson’s six years of observing a female alligator she calls Sylvia. The alligator had set up camp across the river where Thompson watched her from afar, aside from one “early encounter” with her. A détente settled in generally, with the alligators claiming the relatively wild north side of the river, while the humans stuck to the developed south side, venturing to the other side only as admirers of Florida wildlife.

“It’s like National Geographic in our backyard,” she said.

Then, about a year ago, Thompson noticed a large, male alligator encroach on the south side several times before seeming to disappear. But on June 17, after doing her usual yoga session on her dock, she peered down into the water to see if it was deep enough for her customary spritz. She saw the male gator and decided against it, eventually taking video of him snatching a possum carcass from the shore.

The following evening, she was sitting on the dock reading a book when she heard “Sea World-level” splashing, looked over, and saw the same male alligator zipping through the water away from her. After learning from a neighbor that the alligator had a bloody wound on his snout, Thompson suspected he had lost a tussle with Sylvia and run away. She took to calling him Scar due to the wound.

Then came July 4. Thompson started the day around 6:50 by running around the neighborhood to warm up for a 10- to 15-minute yoga session on the landing of her dock, which she does frequently because it’s “a great way to center myself.”

Sweating in 78-degree temperatures and 93 percent humidity, Thompson decided to take a dip before waking up her 9-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter to make them breakfast.

“I was literally thinking in my mind, ‘What a beautiful day. I’m going to have to have a great day with my kids,’ " she said.

Then, Thompson heard a “slight stirring of water” and saw a small ripple in her peripheral vision. That quickly turned into an alligator head and an almost instant attack. Scar sunk his teeth into her right calf, breaking her fibula.

“It sounded like potato chips,” she said.

Thompson screamed, waking up her son in the house. She turned her body and grabbed the nearest rock, but the gator yanked her hard, pulling her away from shore. Remembering Scar’s wound from weeks before, Thompson punched the side of his snout. He countered by jerking her again, pulling her into even deeper waters.

Thompson figured the gator would give her one more pull before doing a death roll, which would probably be the end of it.

“That’s when I just screamed and gave it everything I possibly could, grabbing his top and his bottom jaw and prying as hard as I could,” she said.

Thompson felt her leg come free and pushed the gator, launching herself away from Scar and onto shore.

From start to finish, Thompson estimated that the attack lasted about 30 seconds.

Bleeding profusely, she hobbled to her shed, grabbed a towel and used it as a tourniquet. Then she saw her son running from the house toward her, a look of horror on his face. She told him that mommy had been attacked by an alligator and needed his help. She instructed him to open the door, and when he did, she laid on the floor as blood loss caused her to feel “shock-y.”

Realizing she’d left her phone at the shed, Thompson told her son and her daughter to retrieve it. Thompson called her friend and boss, who lives four doors down and drove them to the hospital. Within 15 minutes of being bit, Thompson was getting medical care.

Doctors feared they would need two or three surgeries and skin grafts to clean, cover and close her wound, Thompson said. But once they started working, she said, they determined that although she had a clean fracture to her fibula and “loads of muscle damage,” the gator hadn’t torn off any skin or severed any major nerves.

Her son provided her quick encouragement in the form of a handmade “get well soon” card of sorts. The front greeted Thompson with an exuberant “You’re not dead!” followed by a drawing of her enlarged mouth screaming as a gator ripped at her bloody leg. Inside: “mommy I’m glad this happened, not this” accompanied by a pair of drawings, one showing her being treated by a doctor, the other with her leg ripped off and eyes closed.

Thompson was released after four days and, she said, is expected to make a full recovery.

Meanwhile, state wildlife officials have euthanized the gator that bit her. Jay Parrish, the state-contracted alligator trapper who caught the gator, said it was over 11 feet long and weighed 405 pounds. He told people to never feed alligators because instead of fearing humans, they learn to associate them with food. That can lead to attacks, which end badly for the animals.

“A fed gator is a dead gator,” Parrish said, adding that people should also keep their distance. “Just admire the beauty of the American alligator.”

Thompson said it’s going to be a long time before she goes back into the river. But she eventually wants to at least be able to launch her kayak into the water, which requires wading into the same place where she was attacked.

But that’s an issue for the future. Right now, she’s focusing on being grateful for a bad situation that could have been a lot worse.

“It doesn’t feel good,” Thompson said, “but I just remind myself when I feel bad about having pain, ‘Hey, I’m alive! I’ve got a leg!’ "