Alligator lunges ‘fast as lightning’ at hiker who got too close in SC, photo shows
How fast can an alligator move? As “fast as lightning,” a South Carolina man learned on a recent hike in the Lowcountry.
Chad Gerald got a little too close to the murky water’s edge, he told McClatchy News. His late August adventure near Francis Marion National Forest could have been the nature lovers’ last -- which would have been a real shame for the alligator, he said.
If it attacked him, chances are the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources would find and euthanize the animal.
It would have been his own fault, Gerald said. When he stumbled onto the gator he could hear hatchlings chirping somewhere nearby. He’s sure it was the mother, feeling protective, who came to greet him.
“[Alligators] usually don’t want anything to do with you,” Gerald said, no stranger to the prehistoric apex predators.
He crept up to the water, recording with his phone. The gator swam toward him, he inched closer. Just feet away from one another, the alligator lunged straight at him.
“When she came at me it was such a blur, it happened so quick and I just turned and ran,” Gerald said.
“To be honest with you, I felt like I knew how close I could get and not be in danger but apparently .. I misjudged it a little bit.”
After sprinting away, he turned around and saw he wasn’t being chased. He might have been too scared to get a good look, but a screengrab taken from his recording captured the moment the gator came at him.
“The rest of the video is just ground. It’s dirt and me hauling ass, scared as hell,” Gerald said.
The avid wildlife enthusiast said he might have “pushed the envelope” too far, and discourages others from getting as close as he did.
“The last thing I want to do is stress an animal out. We do enough harm to them as is,” he said.
“Kind of learned a lesson that I need to respect their territory a little more.”
Alligator attacks are rare, fatal ones even rarer.
In July, a 75-year-old Callawassie Island woman was trimming plants near a community pond when an alligator latched onto her and pulled her into the water, The Island Packet reported. A man passing by on a golf cart jumped in and rescued her.
An alligator drowned a woman in Kiawah Island in May after she reached out to touch it, The State reported. She had also been taking pictures of the animal. Her death is the only death attributable to alligators in South Carolina so far this year.
Twenty-three alligator attacks have been reported in the state from 1915 to 2019.
