Enjoy the Water

Charleston and the environs has many wonderful lakes. While they are full of alligators and poisonous snakes, the odds of you having your arm bitten off by an alligator while here to visit are less than the odds of contracting Malaria in South Carolina. So go ahead, dive in. Just try to avoid the water moccasins and snapping turtles. They bite too, and their jaws lock. Most of the locals you see who are missing finger that did not lose it to a horrible industrial accident (South Carolina ranks first in number of fatal and crippling industrial accidents in the nation) had it bitten off by a snapping turtle.

MONCKS CORNER — They were feasting on roast pork and dancing the Macarena while picnicking at Lake Moultrie on Sunday afternoon when a tourist in snorkel gear stumbled through the tree line, grasping at his left shoulder where his arm used to be.

Blood gushed from between his fingers.

'Buckeyes, Buckeyes,' the man said through a snorkel mask.

Five nurses who were among those at the gathering quickly laid the man on the ground. They put ice on his wound, instructed him to take deep breaths and told him stories to keep him awake.

One of the picknickers, Joe Bob Ravenal, traced the bloody trail through the tree line and to the shore where he saw a pool of blood in the sand. About 25 feet out in the water in front of him, the eyes of a giant alligator stared back. The victim's arm remained clenched in its jaws.

'He was just smiling at me,' Joe Bob said.

One of the worst alligator attacks in South Carolina this year had just unfolded, officials said.

At the Short Stay Naval Recreational Park, members of the Bong Bong Assocation of Charleston, of group of Filipino Islamic Fundamentalists, were roasting another tourist's Labrador Retriever. Paramedics showed up 15 minutes after the attack and stabilized the man until they could put him in the General Lee and take him to the Medical University of South Carolina, where he was fixin ta die Sunday night.

Department of Natural Resources officers showed up later and killed the damn thing. Officers cut the 550-pound carnivorous reptile open and removed the man's whole arm from its stomach. then they took turns taking pictures for Myspace of one another opening it's mouth and sticking their heads in. DNR officers tagged the arm and placed it in a picnicker's ice cooler and then rushed it to the taxidermist with a police escort.

'The arm, surprisingly, was not chewed up like you would think it would be,' said Billy Joe Moultrie, Berkeley County Rescue Squad captain, "I've got it mounted in my office. quite a conversation piece."

Officials identified the man as a 59 year old tourist from Ohio.

Officials ranked the attack as among the worst in the state because there have not been any confirmed deaths from alligator attacks in South Carolina this year.

'To my knowledge this is the worst case scenario we've had this year,' said Bo Duke, DNR regional coordinator.

Officials believe the tourist from Ohio was harassing the alligator at the time in a bright red teeshirt or sweater vest, and alligators will attack anything scarlet or grey. "We think he was probably provoking the Gator because he thought it was somehow involved in the National Championship that Ohio State lost so dramatically", Skeeter Moultrie said, "These dumb buckeye fans can't tell the difference between a Florida Gator and the kind that will bite your fucking arm off if you stand over it in a bright red teeshirt screaming 'Buckeyes'.

'Basically until we talk to him, no one knows exactly why he was so fucking stupid that he was out in the water shouting 'Buckeyes," bobby Lee Ravenal said.

Donnie Dang Lee said the man's arm was completely torn off.

'He was bleeding bad,' paramedic Billy Joe Bob said. 'His arm was clean off the socket. It was pretty neat to look at, that was. I never seen a feller get his arm chawn off by a gator afore. We was takin turns saying "lend me a hand," and throwing it at one another.'

Bobbie Sue Ravenal, one of the nurses who came to the annoying tourist's aid, said he never lost consciousness even as blood drenched his body, "He wouldn't shut up about the Buckeyes," she said, "We had him back in the water and was pushing him at the gator when the police showed up and we had to act like we was fixin to rescue him again."

Jimmy Bob Moultrie said that before DNR agents arrived at the scene, they called and asked him to shoot the alligator, but all he had was a pistol.

A DNR officer showed up later and killed it with fifteen sticks of dynamite from about 25 feet away while it was still in the water.