Florida man prises open the jaws of an alligator who had his dog in its mouth

The video is pretty extraordinary. You won’t see this sort of video very often. The man you see in the video is retiree, Richard Wilbanks, 74. He said that his instinctS took over when he saw his three-month-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel dog, Gunner, being snatched by a alligator in October. He waded into his pond in his backyard in Estero and the action was recorded on a surveillance camera.

You can see that he waded in up to his waist and grabbed the alligator from under the water where it had got Gunner in his mouth. He said it was hard to open the alligator’s mouth and that his hands were left “chewed up”. He saw his doctor about a tetanus jab afterwards.

Gunner was taken to a veterinarian and was found to have one puncture wound in his belly but you can see at the end of the video that he is otherwise in fine health thanks to his “dad”.

There like children to us, so there was no second thought whatsoever.- Wilbanks.

The surveillance cameras were set up to monitor wildlife including mainly bobcat and deer to help people better understand and appreciate wildlife in the area. The programme is managed, as I understand it, by the Florida Wildlife Federation who recently discovered the video material.

Please note that sometimes videos such as this one stop working after a while because of reasons beyond my control. If that has happened, I apologise.

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