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A fearless Florida woman jumped on top of an alligator and pried its jaws open to save her beloved dog from being attacked during their nightly stroll.
Kim Spencer and her pooch, Kona, were on an evening walk in Tampa, Fla. when a 6-and-a-half-foot alligator emerged from a nearby lake and started heading their way, according to FOX 13.
Spencer tried to pull Kona away, but the ferocious predator was too fast and quickly caught up to them.
“I saw the eyes. I saw it turning itself around towards us, and I started pulling Kona away, saying, ‘Let’s go.’ But she’s a really strong dog,” Spencer told the outlet.
“She’s facing it, it’s facing her, and it suddenly jumped at her and got her.”
Kona’s entire head and right shoulder were inside the swamp beast’s mouth when the pet parent “stopped thinking” and risked her life to save her four-legged friend.
“[I] jumped on it, straddled it, as ladylike as that is, and was trying to pry its jaws open,” Spencer added.
The scuffle didn’t last long as Spencer pried the gator’s jaws wide enough to free her furry friend.
“We just got lucky because it ran,” Spencer said. “Just as quickly as it ran after us it went right back in the water and I got up and we were out of there.”
Both survived without significant injuries, but they did get wounded during the incident and both received stitches for their wounds.
The married dog owner has bandages on both hands while her precious pup has to wear a cone.
“We’re empty nesters, she’s my baby, so I wasn’t ready to take on that mindset that she’s an animal versus a human,” Spencer said.
Spencer said she and Kona — who she rescued 8 years ago — had been walking in the Westwood Lakes neighborhood when the gator launched its attack, according to Bay News 9.
Last September in Fort Myers – around 120 miles south of Tampa – an angry seven-foot, three-inch alligator attacked 84-year-old Dolores Boppel while she was on a walk with her dog near a pond.
The pooch was unharmed, but the dangerous animal took a “chunk” out of her leg and sent Boppel to the hospital.
In 2022, Eric Merda was swimming in Myakka City, Fla., when a gator took off his arm and left him stranded for three days in a swamp.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimated that the state has 1.3 million alligators “of every size” and reported 11 alligator bites in 2024 and 23 in 2023, one of which was fatal.
A majority of the bites from the swamp creatures result in “major” injuries.
Alligators “prefer to go after prey they can overpower easily” and are naturally scared of humans but “may lose that fear when people feed them,” the commission claimed.
