Gator Bites Swimmer

Okeechobee - Kasey Edwards said he never paid "too much mind" to alligators swimming in canals in Okeechobee County. But early Sunday morning, an 11½-foot alligator had his full attention as Edwards, 18, struggled to free his left arm from the jaws of the reptile. "It's a very surreal feeling. You know, feeling like you're about to die here and you know, praying to God," Edwards said. "I have to give all the credit to God for keeping me out there." He got away with his life and the gator with his left arm. Edwards admits he and his friends were drinking before he decided to jump in the 25-foot-deep canal in Nubbin Slough in Okeechobee County. "I've heard different rumors of what was involved and there were no drugs involved, no dare, nobody pushed me in or something."

At 2:21 a.m. Sunday, Edwards was hanging out with friends on Nubbin Slough in Okeechobee County when he told them he was going to swim across a 25-foot-deep canal, according to an Okeechobee County Sheriff's Office report. Edwards had been drinking alcoholic beverages earlier and may have been impaired, according to witnesses quoted in the report. His friends tried to persuade him not to do it, the report states. Halfway through the swim, an alligator approached Edwards and clamped down on his left arm. Edwards said he knew the next move was the death roll, when a gator pulls its prey underwater and rolls the victim around to drown it. When the alligator grabbed his arm, he remembered that gators spin their prey, so he told WFLX-TV that he grabbed a buoy line and didn't let go."I was just like holding on with everything I could for this gator was trying to pull me under," he told the station. "I'd surface, get a gasp of air and he'd just shake again and pull me under."He did it about five times," Edwards continued. Somewhere in the battle he used the middle finger on his right hand to poke the reptile in the eye. That's when Edwards got free, he said, started swimming and realized he didn't have his left arm. "I still at this time didn't realize that my arm was gone," he told WFLX-TV. "I just — my adrenalin was pumping, and I swam to the other side of the bank." His main concern was to make it to the east end of the canal so friends could pull him to safety.

The Florida State Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission captured the alligator after the attack, WFLX-TV reported. Edwards was taken to a Melbourne hospital for treatment and he should be released by the end of the week. Edwards told FOXNews.com that he wants the state to do more to control the alligator population, citing the safety of young children, but he declined to discuss his own encounter further."It seems like there's a crossroads," Edwards told WFLX-TV. "Either you have a positive attitude, you know, just make the best of a bad situation, or just sit there and feel sorry for yourself."

On Monday evening, Edwards was in fair condition at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne with his arm severed about 3 to 4 inches above the elbow. Today, Edwards said, he will have surgery. He hopes to be out of the hospital by the weekend. Edwards said his attack shows something needs to be done about the overpopulation of gators. "They're not protected creatures. They're nuisance animals," he said. Edwards said the credit for his survival and quick thinking goes to God, friends and emergency personnel. "I don't care who you are or how strong you think you are. You aren't going to be able to hold on to a buoy line while an 11½-foot alligator is trying to pull you underwater," he said.

Commentary: Now here is a drunken youth who goes into the alligator's habitat and gets bitten. Who is the nuisance animal? Does God protect drunks? Apparently not. Then again, the kid survived! Maybe God wanted to teach this guy a lesson: SOBER UP, and don't swim in alligator territory in the middle of the night!

Fleeing Criminal Killed By Gators

MICCOSUKEE INDIAN RESERVATION, Fla. -- A man who jumped into an alligator-infested lake as he fled police died from a gator attack, authorities said Wednesday. Justo Padron, 36, of West Miami-Dade, was burglarizing a vehicle near the Miccosukee Resort and Convention Center last Thursday when police arrived, according to the tribe. Padron fled and jumped into a nearby lake where a sign warns people: "Danger Live Alligators." His body was recovered a day later with what appeared to be alligator teeth marks on his upper torso.

The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Wednesday that Padron died of an alligator attack. His death has been classified an accident. An accomplice, Heriberto Rubio, surrendered and was arrested, said Dexter Lehtinen, a tribe attorney. Lehtinen said the two men were not members of the Miccosukee Tribe. Padron was wanted by authorities since September for violating his probation after pleading guilty in June to cocaine possession, according to The Miami Herald. He was arrested more than a dozen times since 1989 for various charges including burglary, robbery and drug possession, the newspaper reported. Padron was released from prison in 2002 after a six-year sentence for burglary. Padron died last Thursday, after he and another man, Heriberto Rubio, were spotted by a police officer while trying to steal a car in the casino parking lot, according to a tribe spokesman and court records. Rubio was captured after a short chase; he now faces charges of grand theft, resisting arrest and battery on a police officer. Police divers found Padron's body in the lake on Friday afternoon, but the tribe -- which is not bound by public-records law, did not disclose his death until Tuesday. The medical examiner has classified Padron's death as an accident. The office would not release any other details about the case.

Padron, 36, was classified as a ''habitual felony offender'' after more than a dozen arrests since 1989 for burglary, robbery, drug possession and other charges, Miami-Dade court records show. He was released from prison in 2002 following a six-year sentence for burglary. His most recent arrest came in April for drug possession. He was accused of selling cocaine to an undercover police officer. He was sentenced to 18 months probation after pleading guilty in June. In September, Padron violated probation by moving without notifying his probation officer and failing to pay court costs. A judge issued an arrest warrant on Sept. 24. Padron grew up around Sweetwater, one of six brothers and sisters who moved to the area from Cuba more than 20 years ago, said his sister, Maria. ''Regardless of the crime he was committing, he was a good person,'' she said. "He just had his ways.''

Rubio also has a half-dozen arrests for assault, robbery, cocaine possession and other charges. Last month he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of trespassing on a construction site, records show. A trapper later captured and killed two alligators found in the lake. One was about 7 ½ feet, the other 9 feet 3 inches, according to the trapper.

Dog Laws Need to Change

Every so often the newspapers will publish some story about how many thousands of dogs are killed by the local county every years. In big cities it could be an astronomical number every year. It seems to me that there are a lot of factors that contribute to the death of so many dogs every year, and I think that local and state legislators could change the pet laws to make a big difference that would diminish the number of dogs that must be killed every year. These are the negative factors:

1. Apartment buildings and condominiums are permitted to ban pets. Usually the owners can change the rules whenever they want to, and people who have pets have to get rid of them. Apartment dwellers who have pets often have to get rid of them when they move to another rental unit that does not permit pets. Affordable housing in many cities is very limited, and often they do not permit pets. The apartment buildings and condominiums that do permit pets often charge an extra deposit premium per pet which is usually a minimum of $500 per pet and can be several thousand dollars in some building associations.
   
2. A dog license in most cities is around $100, but if you forget to send the payment on time the late fee in many cities is $500 or more. In some cities the late fee is astronomical and accrues monthly, so that after a few months an owner who is facing astronomical fees might decide to just give the dog away or take it to the dog pound rather than pay thousands of dollars in penalties. While these fees cannot be enforced against an apartment dweller, local governments will put a lien on a land-owner in a heartbeat, especially if the person who owns the dog also owns the home where the dog was registered. Some fines don't make much sense, and screwing pet owners for being late is one of those fines that I think is counter-productive.


3. Puppy Mills need to be outlawed or strictly regulated. At a shopping plaza near my home there is a puppy store almost next to a Pet Supermarket. The puppy store is horrifying. The poor dogs are in tiny cages that are often stacked, and it is like some kind of hellhole. Often the dogs stink from the urine and poop which has not been cleaned, and some of the bigger dogs look sick because they have outgrown the tiny cages. The people that work there are usually teenagers, and I am talking about the kind that look like thugs who are on probation from Youth Hall. I have rarely seen nice people working at these store-front puppy mills. I wonder how many dogs die in these little puppy stores, and I wonder what regulatory standards have to be followed, if any. I feel sorry for anyone that has to work at a puppy store because they have no other choice for earning income. I guess once they get used to the suffering of the animals it is just like any other business. Things have to be done to turn a profit, and at the end of every day somebody has to bag the dead dogs and toss them in the dumpster.
   
4. Regulating Pet Rescue organizations and making sure they are actually rescuing pets and not scamming donors. I have a somewhat jaded view of Pet Rescue. My only experience with this was some place near my house which seemed to have the same twenty dogs every time I ever went there. I actually tried to adopt a dog there once and they gave me an application which was longer than a mortgage, and they wanted to perform every kind of background check and also contact my employer as part of this pre-adoption check. The adoption fee was more than what it would cost to buy a puppy at a reputable store, and about ten times what it would cost to adopt a pet at the county dog pound. It would be nice if these pet rescue organizations had to be audited every year and then post their audits where the public could check. Number one question would be how many dogs actually got adopted.
   
5. Public parks need to allow pets. It really sucks that almost every park in most cities will not allow dogs. You cannot take your dog on a nature walk, jogging, biking, or anywhere else that involves public parks. Most state parks have similar bans against dogs. So if you wanted to take the dog camping or hiking with the family, sorry. Dogs are excluded primarily due to two issues. The most popular one is the dog poop. If everyone can bring their dog to the park, then it would be full of poop. I think that is a valid concern, but in many cities there are pooper scooper laws that encourage people to pick up after the dog or get fined. Nobody will know if such a system will work unless it is tried. The other major concern is that dogs will bite someone. The only solution to this is that dogs have to be kept on a leash. Additionally, public parks have to be immune to lawsuits as a result of dog bite cases. Lawyers and litigation have destroyed America and many traditions of America because of their greed. In order to make a few bucks, lawyers will ruin things for everyone else. Their theory is that by filing these lawsuits, they force governments and corporations to act more safely. What really happens is that once a government entity gets sued over something (like a dog bite), then they prohibit whatever activity led to the lawsuit (like allowing dogs in parks). There is no way to stop a dog bite if the dog owner is irresponsible and brings an aggressive dog to the park, so the only way to keep it from happening is to ban dogs. So everyone loses because of one dumb asshole.

That's my rant on dog laws and dogs. If you have any ideas about dog laws and how to improve the life of dogs and their standing in society, post a comment! Michelangelo said that you can judge a society by the way it treats its animals.

Puerto Rico Pet Massacre

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Animal control workers seized dozens of dogs and cats from housing projects in the town of Barceloneta and hurled them from a bridge to their deaths, authorities and witnesses said Friday. Mayor Sol Luis Fontanez blamed a contractor hired to take the animals to a shelter. "This is an irresponsible, inhumane and shameful act," he told The Associated Press. Fontanez said the city hired Animal Control Solution to clear three housing projects of pets after warning residents about a no-pet policy. He said the city paid $60 for every animal recovered and another $100 for each trip to a shelter in the San Juan suburb of Carolina.

Raids were conducted on Monday and Wednesday, and the boricua residents told TV reporters they saw the animal control workers inject the animals. When they asked what they were giving them, they said they were told it was a sedative for the drive to the shelter. "They came as if it were a drug raid," said Alma Febus, an animal welfare activist. "They took away dogs, cats and whatever animal they could find. Some pets were taken away in front of children." But instead of being taken to a shelter, the pets and strays were thrown 50 feet from a bridge in the neighboring town of Vega Baja, according to Fontanez, witnesses and activists, apparently before dawn Tuesday. "Many were already dead when they threw them, but others were alive," said Jose Manuel Rivera, who lives next to the bridge. "Some of the animals managed to climb to the highway even though they were all battered, but about 50 animals remained there, dead."

Rivera said he alerted officials, who spread lime over the animals' corpses to control the stench. Animal Control Solution owner Julio Diaz said he went to the bridge when he heard of the allegations, but remains unconvinced that the dead animals are the same ones his company collected. "We have never thrown animals off any place. We always take them to our local shelter and euthanize them," he said. "They can't prove that they are the same dogs that we picked up." Fontanez said he would cancel the city's contract with Animal Control Solution and said city lawyers were considering a lawsuit.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has a rule allowing locally owned and operated housing authorities to set pet rules, but it does not grant authority for a blanket ban or mass confiscation, said Brian Sullivan, an HUD spokesman in Washington. Asked to comment on the reported pet massacre, Sullivan said: "This sickens me if true." Animal rights activists have long criticized the treatment of pets in Puerto Rico, where there is no pet registration law and little spaying or neutering. Animal shelters are overwhelmed and must kill many of the dogs they receive, according to Victor Collazo, president of the island's Association of Medical Veterinarians. One organization recruits volunteers to take dogs home with them on commercial flights, and sends between 1,500 and 2,000 dogs a year from Puerto Rico to American shelters. At least 175 dogs have been rescued in the last couple of years from Yabucoa Beach, which activists nicknamed "Dead Dog Beach" because of the strays that roam the coast and are sometimes found dead of disease, starvation or gunshots. Similar rescue efforts have been undertaken in the Bahamas and elsewhere in the Caribbean.

Commentary? What can anyone say? I guess the poor people that live in apartment projects have no rights, and the pets have even less rights. What a horrible way to treat man's best friend. What an inhuman way to treat the children whose beloved pets were taken from them to be murdered.