Back in a Florida river, an alligator
has Fred Langdale dead in its sights
and is approaching quickly.
So in that moment, I'm thinking, what can I do?
What can I do?
And some of the stuff I've already thought about
ahead of time because I'm in the water all the time,
I'm in Florida.
You better expect to see a gator at some time in your life.
So how am I going to handle this?
So when I see him coming.
In my mind, I know I can't outrun him,
I know I can't beat him in a straight-up fight.
So my only option is to tire him out and hold
him till my friends get out.
Alligators have adapted to their environment
for millions of years.
They're an aquatic predator.
Us humans, we are terrestrial.
So when we go into their habitat,
they definitely have the advantage.
And as scary as this sounds is when
you are head-to-head to an alligator,
to a crocodile, or another predator,
the last thing you want to do is panic or swim or run away.
You need to stand your ground, you
need to let that alligator or crocodile know,
oh, you want to come towards me?
Well, it's not going to be an easy fight.
[music playing]
When he got probably 5 yards away, I prayed.
I said, Lord, make me fast and give me agility.
And when I saw him coming, I'm like, OK, the first move he's
going to do is go under water.
So I started taking some long deep breaths
as fast as I could to get as much oxygen
in my bloodstream as possible.
[breathing]
Alligators and crocodiles, they can hold their breath
anywhere from 90 minutes to two hours if it is a large adult.
At this point, the alligator is very much
an advantage over Fred.
From the dock, it was hard to tell exactly what he was doing.
We could tell he was getting lower in the water
and basically just waited, sat there for like 5 seconds, 10
seconds, which seems like a short time
until you're sitting there and it's a long time of waiting.
When he's probably about 3 yards away,
I got as low in the water as I could and laid my body out flat
so when he would come to me, I wouldn't just be straight
in the water, I would be ready to wrap my legs around his tail
or his body so that way I can get a firm grip on him
and hold his mouth shut.
When the gator was coming towards me
and he's right here, his head's face toward me,
his mouth is closed, and I was trying to guess about his size.
So my guess was we might be 6-foot,
and that's when my adrenaline kicked in.
And I reached up underneath his mouth, there's like a flat
there, and I grabbed hold and I pushed up.
By me pushing up, he's moving so fast that now that by the time
I got his head up, it's now here.
So I take my right hand and I pulled it up
on top of his mouth to keep it shut
because now I've got the bottom jaw,
now I need to get the top jaw down.
At this point, Fred thinks he's up
against a 6-foot alligator.
A 6-foot alligator, that's still a lot of muscle
that can do a lot of damage.
And even a 6-foot alligator latches onto you,
does a death roll, it's going to tear a limb.
And by the time I got my left hand up,
he's kind of pulling me with him by moving so fast.
And I wrap my legs around his body to hold
on, to keep his mouth shut.
I'm thinking, yeah, I'm a lot bigger than you thought I was.
At the same time, you're way bigger than I thought you were.
So my plan to begin with, that's out the window.
Fred finds himself chest-to-chest
with an 11-foot alligator.
At that length, the gator can easily
tip the scales over 400 pounds.
I had my arms and my legs wrapped around him.
He makes a stray dive towards the bottom, 8 to 10 yards.
[music playing]
And then it just went calm and you couldn't see anything,
just water was like glass.
Matt and Abraham were still there, waiting for Fred
to come up, or to help Fred.
And at that point, we were just yelling like,
y'all guys, get out because it's a done deal basically.
We don't know if Fred's coming up or not at that point.
[music playing]
The calm on the surface of the Kalusa Hatchee River
is deceptive.
20-feet below, Fred Langdale is in a fight for his life.
The warehouse positioned, his head was right here.
So I had a hand right here and--
well, I used to have a hand right there.
And my legs were wrapped around him
so his front claws were kind of digging
into my stomach here and there.
And he points straight down and his tail starts kicking
to go down as far as possible.
When he finally got to his preferred depth,
I guess, I could feel his body starting to twist like wiggle,
as in he was about to do a death row.
For an alligator a crocodile, the death roll,
it serves two purposes.
It can either help take chunks of a large prey,
or it could also be used to injure an opponent.
So I squeezed on as tight as I could,
and I made it around probably two spins.
And on the third spin, I felt myself
losing grip because he was moving a lot
faster than I could hold on.
So I pushed off and kicked off of him as hard
as I could, like try to kick away
in the water to get as much distance
between me and his mouth.
We were just kind of stopping, we
were eyeing other for a second.
And then he just takes off in the water.
As deep as I was, it was just pitch black all around
and there was like a little bit of light
up top from the light coming through the water.
So I'm trying to get to the surface.
And I'm looking around seeing where the gator is
and all of a sudden I see him come out of the black,
and he's coming straight for me.
[growling]
At the last second, I tried to turn to the side
and pushing with my arm to try to turn myself,
and I could see his mouth go over my right hand.
And I'm trying to pull back, but when I do,
I could fill my pinky touch his tongue.
Into a gator, that's the wire of the trap.
As soon as you touch that, trap goes off.
His mouth shuts down and he knows something's in there
and he just needs to hold it.
He snaps down and grabs hold of my arm,
he starts to shake back and forth, and then he stops.
I'm probably 7 yards underwater or something like that.
And, like, I could feel the bones
start to like kind of crack a bit,
but I couldn't feel the pain.
So that's either God working to help me through that,
or it was the adrenaline.
So I started to think, OK, what do I do now?
So I slowly started kicking my legs and my left hand
to get up to the surface.
And when I got up to the surface,
I took a couple of breaths and I could feel
his weight pull me back down.
[music playing]
And I prayed and I said, Lord, I'll see you here in a minute.
Everyone was still yelling.
Matt and Abraham were still waiting to see if Fred
was going to pop up or not.
[music playing]
So once it went calm, there's nothing we could do.
Pitch black water, 20-foot deep, 15-foot deep,
you're not finding him, there's no helping.
[music playing]
The alligator holds Fred under by his arm, drowning the prey.
I have accepted that I was probably not going to make
it out of the river that day.
And I wanted to make sure that my last moments
were some of my greatest.
And at that moment I could feel my Granddaddy, John,
my Uncle Johnny, and my friend Kip were on the bank.
And I knew they were watching me.
They're either about to welcome me home to heaven
or they wanted front row seats to see something awesome
happen, because that's the only two
outcomes here that I can see.
And at that moment, a voice in my head
told me rip your arm off.
I'm like, well, that's the best option I got,
so might as well go with it.
[music playing]