He wrote the book on survival instincts

Don Goodman escaped from an alligator attack in 2002 and lived. He's sorry his attacker didn't. He writes about his encounter in Summer of the Dragon.

By Jeff Klinkenberg, Times Staff Writer
Published August 3, 2007

Gainesville Kanapaha Botanical Gardens director Don Goodman wades through a stream at the gardens in Gainesville while fertilizing Victoria water lilies. Four years ago Goodman had his right arm torn from his body by an alligator while cleaning a nearby pond in the gardens. Previous story: Still in MoJo's grip (05.05.03)
	[Edmund D. Fountain | Times]

GAINESVILLE - William Bartram, the 18th century naturalist, might have had the right idea about alligators. Assume they are out to eat you. They're dinosaurs, for crying out loud.

"I was attacked on all sides," he wrote after touring Florida's St. Johns River in 1774. ". . . they struck their jaws together so close to my ears, as almost to stun me, and I expected every moment to be dragged out of the boat and instantly devoured."

Don Goodman, a 21st century naturalist, learned about gators the hard way, too. He came of age when the alligator population, depressed from overhunting, acted more like nervous Nellies than ferocious dragons. So he assumed they naturally avoided people. He thought that when a gator bit a man, the gator more than likely would spit him out upon realizing the error - and probably apologize.

That was before a big alligator swallowed his right arm.

Now Goodman says, "I think alligators are as dangerous today as they must have been during Bartram's time."

Goodman, 64, is a wiry, shaggy-haired, fast-talking fellow who grew up catching frogs and snakes in rural Missouri. He is the author of a new book, Summer of the Dragon, an account of his life as a modern Huck Finn and his luck both good and bad.

He operates a tourist attraction called Kanapaha Botanical Gardens near the University of Florida campus, but first and foremost he's a reptile guy. He loves his turtles, his snakes - even the rattlesnakes that have killed two of his dogs.

"Rattlesnakes are magnificent animals," he says. "Just like alligators."

He saw his first gator almost four decades ago. At the time he was finishing his doctorate in herpetology. He was catching snakes in the swamp. His flashlight beam picked up two red glowing alligator eyes in the distance. Almost immediately the red glowing eyes submerged.

In Bartram's time, alligators apparently weren't so bashful. Terrified Homo sapiens tried to defend themselves with incantations, spears and primitive firearms.

Nineteenth century Florida became a challenging place for alligators as skittish and well-equipped pioneers killed them on sight. After the Civil War, when tourists discovered Florida, wealthy visitors bored by the beach shot gators, from riverboat decks, for kicks.

The carnage continued in the 20th century: Hunters and poachers slaughtered alligators by the thousands for hides, skulls and meat. When Don Goodman arrived in Florida, alligators were an endangered species that tended to flee humans on sight.

"One of the really bizarre aspects of the personality of alligators," wrote Goodman's mentor, the legendary University of Florida herpetologist Archie Carr, "is their reluctance to eat people. Eating people . . . seems to be against some rigid rule they have."

Florida officially began keeping track of alligator maulings in 1948. When Carr wrote those words in 1969, there had never been a fatal attack.

- - -

Alligators no longer are an endangered species. They have been legally hunted for years, and trappers remove thousands of what the state calls "nuisance" animals thought to pose a threat.

But the hunting hasn't cowed the gators. They killed three people in 2006. One victim apparently was sitting on a sea wall, dangling her feet over the water, when death dragged her in.

Since 1971 there have been 17 other fatalities. They include a child who was walking her dog along the shore and a woman who was ambushed while gardening next to a canal.

Our state no longer suffers from an alligator deficit. By some accounts, about 2-million patrol our lakes, rivers, creeks and golf course water hazards.

Of course, there are a lot more of us, too - 18-million residents and another 80-million tourists. There has never been a better opportunity for the warm-blooded and the cold-blooded to look into each other's eyes and say "howdy."

Even so, Dr. Kent Vliet, a herpetologist at the University of Florida, is reluctant to cry "Gator!"

"It's horrific when even one person gets attacked," he says, "but you are still more likely to be struck by lightning or die from a bee sting than be hurt by an alligator in Florida."

Alligators or their kin have existed on Earth for 20-million years. Their brains are about the size of a walnut. Humans and their superior brains arrived in Florida 12,000 years ago.

Vliet's advice: Take advantage of your intelligence, people.

Don't feed alligators - they'll learn to associate your hands with handouts. Assume that every body of fresh water in Florida - even a ditch - contains an alligator. Behave like you're the one with the bigger brain.

"Now, there is no doubt that when alligators are persecuted, they do change their behavior," he says. But Vliet thinks teaching people to avoid alligators is better than shooting alligators that, after all, are behaving like alligators.

He also has sympathy for Don Goodman, his old friend of many years.

"If there is anyone who deserves our respect, who deserves to be listened to, it's Don," Vliet says. "He's gone through so much."

- - -

On March 15, 2002, something interesting happened at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens. Overnight four alligators traveled from a nearby lake into the 60-acre tourist attraction's sprawling ponds.

The biggest - Goodman guessed 12 feet - immediately ate two of the other gators. "Mojo" - that became the gator's nickname - roared at distant thunder. "He was a magnificent dragon," Goodman says.

Mojo stayed. Goodman erected fences to keep Mojo and tourists apart. He was careful never to do pond maintenance when the alligator was nearby. Even so, Goodman's wife, Jordan, was alarmed. "He's too big," she said. Her husband resisted having Mojo removed, knowing that state trappers were allowed to kill alligators for their hides.

"I hate to see those giant alligators killed," Goodman says. "They're superior animals. You don't want their genes removed from the wild."

On Sept. 23, Goodman waded into the pond nearest the butterfly garden to remove algae, after first noting Mojo's whereabouts. Mojo was several hundred feet away, lying on the bank, on the other side of a small jungle and a waterfall.

Goodman felt safe as he toiled. He broke for lunch and returned to the pond to finish his chores. One difference: Mojo had moved during Goodman's lunch. He was now lying on the bottom of the turbid pond where Goodman intended to weed.

Mojo exploded from the bottom, jaws agape, toward Goodman. Everything happened fast. Goodman didn't even know Mojo had him until he was dragged face down into the water.

Alligators bite at 2,000 pounds of pressure per square inch, but Goodman felt no pain. He hit Mojo on the snout with his left hand to let him know who was boss, but Mojo pulled him under.

Fighting to his feet, Goodman suddenly realized that Mojo was not one of those timid alligators he remembered from the 1960s. Mojo was one of Bartram's dinosaurs that intended to devour him.

Here is what Goodman wrote in Summer of the Dragon about what happened next.

"At that moment, the water before me began to churn violently and Mojo disappeared in the froth and spray. Still in shock, my first thought was that Mojo was shaking his head back and forth, then I realized I wasn't moving with him and remembered with horror that alligators didn't tear food that way. They spin their bodies to detach a morsel.

"Mojo was twisting off my arm!"

The churning stopped. Goodman saw that he was attached to Mojo by a smooth white cord of tissue, likely a tendon.

"With one more lunge, he could grab my upper arm and withdraw into the pond. And so I pulled upward forcefully with what remained of my arm and snapped the white cord to finally separate us, pivoted and slogged the 20 feet to shore hoping he wasn't in pursuit but not taking the time to look back."

- - -

Officially, Mojo was 11 feet, 3 inches long and weighed 393 pounds. At the hospital, Goodman was distressed to learn that a state wildlife trapper had killed Mojo - to recover his arm, which turned out to be too mangled for reattachment.

He says life as a one-armed man hasn't been awful. He can drive, he can open a can, he can slice a watermelon. Nobody expects him to wear a tie.

He takes medicine for phantom pain. The hand no longer present feels like it's in a clamp. Goodman also says he feels like he's holding out the absent arm, like a waiter carrying a napkin in a fancy restaurant.

When he presses the stump against the wall, his brain thinks he is trying to do something impossible - push the missing limb through the wall. The brain can't abide the impossible. Only then does it allow the arm no longer present to relax and dangle at his side.

- - -

Goodman doesn't know what to think about alligators anymore. He thinks they have certainly changed from the reptiles he knew in the 1960s. "They're more dangerous."

But he hates the idea of hunters going out and killing them willy-nilly. "Florida is not Florida without alligators," he says.

Some folks think he is daft - not because he still loves alligators but because he still goes into that damned pond.

He says he enjoys manual labor more than paperwork, so he wades among the water lilies, removes dead leaves, reaches into the black water to pick up the occasional stone. He feeds turtles, delights in the appearance of banded water snakes.

Herons squawk. Pig frogs rumble.

"I am certainly more wary now," he says. "I'm always looking around."

Sometimes he sees the little gator that trundled over from the lake earlier this summer. It's a 3-footer, and like Goodman, it no longer is fully factory equipped. Looks like a bull gator bit off one of its limbs.

Goodman hopes big daddy is a long way off.

Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at (727) 893-8727 or klink@sptimes.com

- - -

On the Web

Read the Times' earlier story about Don Goodman, "Still in Mojo's Grip," at life.tampabay.com.

If you go

For information about Kanapaha Botanical Gardens, call (352) 372-4981 or go to www.kanapaha.org.

Meet the author
Don Goodman will talk about his experience with reptiles and sign copies of Summer of the Dragon at 7 p.m. Aug. 15, when the Suncoast chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society meets at the Hillsborough Extension Office, 5339 County Road 579 in Seffner.

On Aug. 16, Goodman will autograph books beginning at noon at Haslam’s Book Store, 2025 Central Ave, St Petersburg. For information, call (727) 822-8616.

Books are also available, by mail, from Kanapaha Botanical Gardens, 4700 SW 58th Drive, Gainesville, FL 32608. Price, including shipping, is $19.
 

[Last modified August 1, 2007, 16:59:46]