A woman paddleboarding in Ocala over Labor Day weekend had an extremely close encounter with a giant alligator.
In multiple videos and photos posted to her Facebook page, Vicki Reamy Baker can be seen fending off a large alligator at Silver Springs State Park. “Why are you messing with me?” Why are you trying to bite me?,” says Baker in one of the videos. “Someone’s been feeding that gator, makes them very dangerous.”
At one point in a video, the gator can be seen hissing at Baker, after she nudged it with her paddle. A man can then be heard on a loudspeaker telling Baker to get away from the gator. “Mam, I would suggest backing up after you just made him pretty mad.”
Baker also mentioned that the gator tried to bite her paddleboard. “Oh my god, I had to push him away with my paddle,” she added.
While certainly scary, alligator attacks are rare.
Data from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission shows that in 2020, a total of 12 alligator attacks occurred, with an average of seven unprovoked bites per year over the last 10 years.
It’s unclear exactly why this gator approached Baker, but the likelihood of someone being seriously injured from an unprovoked alligator incident is about one in 3.1 million.
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This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2021.
