FORT MYERS, Fla. \u2014 A man says he is lucky to be alive after a quiet night of fishing turned into a fight for his life when an alligator showed up in his backyard.<\/p>\n
The gator dragged 71-year-old James Grayson McMicken into the water, but he used one trick to make the animal let go.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to do everything I can not to die,\u201d McMicken said.<\/p>\n
McMicken said it was a routine Friday night. He took his bulldog out, grabbed his fishing pole and made one cast into the canal behind his north Fort Myers home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started reeling, and it jumped out of the water and grabbed me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
McMicken said the gator clamped down on his right leg and pulled him into the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe rolled me down off the bank into the water,\u201d he said. \u201cI stuck my thumb in one eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he then grabbed his fishing pole and fought back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just took that fishing pole and jabbed him in that other eye and jabbed him and jabbed him and jabbed him,\u201d he said. \u201cIt seemed like forever, but it wasn\u2019t that long. But then he turned loose.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always heard that if you got no other choice, hit them eyes. And that\u2019s what got him off of me,\u201d McMicken said.<\/p>\n
McMicken said he\u2019s legally hunted alligators before and that experience taught him how to survive the attack.<\/p>\n
He said once the gator let go, he made a quick decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d have never made it crawling this far, so I called my dog over, and she stood there and let me get up on her back to where I could get stood up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When he made it inside his home, his wife cleaned him up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I sat down in my chair and passed out,\u201d he said. \u201cI was so exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n
His family rushed him to Cape Coral Hospital, where he said he became a novelty.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the nurses on the floor had to come by and go, \u2018Wow, you did what?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the attack happened last Friday. Officers and state-contracted trappers have yet to find the gator.<\/p>\n
But McMicken has one thing to say.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo gator is going to run me off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
McMicken is now recovering at home and starting physical therapy. He hopes to be back out fishing soon, although he said he\u2019ll never head to the water\u2019s edge at night the same way again.<\/p>\n
\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. \u2014 A man says he is lucky to be alive after a quiet night of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-328913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}