01x07 - It Smelled of Death...

[bunniefuu]

FRED: Growing up,
we would go up to the river

just about every single weekend,

swimming, fishing...
trying to find something

that we could do
that wouldn't get us in trouble.

But what's the worst that could happen?

[suspenseful music]

NARRATOR: Moore Haven, Florida,
a small town on the western shore

of Lake Okeechobee,

one of the largest freshwater lakes
in the United States.

The lake and its surrounding rivers
provide habitat for wildlife

and recreation
for the surrounding communities,

for people like Fred Langdale,

who's swimming in these waters
since he was a boy.

I grew up in the woods.
My parents had a car seat on our buggy.

Most people call it a swamp buggy. We just
call it a buggy, from where we're from.

At age 11, I got my boater's license,
so I could go out on the lake by myself,

go fishing or hunting by myself.

FRED: The wildlife in Moore Haven
gets diverse at times.

Every now and then you see a panther.
There's turkeys, deer, hogs, gators.

You name it, it's in Moore Haven.

Can't remember how old I was
when I knew Gary.

Like he's always been there.

Moore Haven has one red light.
We got one river and one big lake.

There's no entertainment, at all.

You just have to figure out something to
do for fun.

Hunt, fish, swim in the river.

NARRATOR: July 9th, 2012, a hot
and muggy Florida afternoon,

Fred, Gary , and their friends,
Matt and Abraham,

decide to cool off
in the Caloosahatchee River,

one of the many tributaries
that flows into Lake Okeechobee.

FRED: Normally, before we'd go swimming,

we'd have somebody on a boat
scare off anything that was there.

Or we'd fire a couple of shots into the
water to scare off something.

But that day, it was a spontaneous,
"Hey, let's go to the river."

No one had the boat ready.
No one had a g*n.

GARY: The river's probably 50 yards wide,

dark water, you know,
from the soil and the sediment.

There's manatees.
There's gators, snook, snakes.

Someone brought their bike up and we were
jumping the bike off the dock

and trying to do back flips
off the dock and stuff like that.

- That's when Fred asked...
- Y'all wanna race to the other side?

He kinda started to swim a little bit,
waiting on the other two.

Matt and Abraham, they jumped in
to follow Fred across.

We started racing. I came out
in front. Matt was behind me.

Abraham was bringing up the rear.

If they beat me, I'm never gonna hear
the end of it. The race was on.

[splashing]

GARY: They're acting like fools,
yelling at each other,

having a good time.

Going as fast as I can,
eyes on the prize, I see the bank there.

Fred had a pretty good lead on 'em,

and they were talking and yelling
at each other and then...

Gator!

FRED: That's when I hear Abraham scream,
"Gator!"

Which in Florida, that's not uncommon,
but it's not because there's a gator.

They're wanting you to stop, look around,
while the person passes you.

In my mind,
I'm like, "He ain't passing me,

- I ain't falling for that trick."
- Gator!

FRED: The second time I heard him
yell, "Gator!",

I heard like the fear in his voice,

so I turned around. All the blood
was draining from his face,

I was like, "Ah, where's it at?"

So I started looking where he
was looking, I saw a gator,

and it was kinda going towards Matt
and Abraham, and I started thinking,

"Hey, what's gonna happen next?"

NARRATOR: The American Alligator,
this prehistoric crocodilian reptile

averages lengths of 12 feet
and can weigh up to 1,000 pounds.

At home in the water, it can swim up
to 20 miles per hour

and submerge for well over 90 minutes.

Dr. Marisa Tellez, Executive Director
of the Crocodile Research Coalition,

is not surprised that the alligator is
heading for Fred and his friends.

This alligator,
it was in the middle of the day,

it's probably basking somewhere
along the shoreline

and all of a sudden the alligator
starts hearing some splashing.

Crocodilians are very curious animals
and a lot of splashing,

that can mean two things,
one, dying prey or two,

depending on how the splashing was,
"Am I hearing the threat

of a possible opponent alligator
that wants to take my territory?"

GARY: We start yelling. I think Abraham
has seen him first in the water.

Fred was probably about 20 or 30 feet
in front of Matt and Abraham.

FRED: Twenty-five, 30 yards away,
he's coming directly towards us.

So I don't think he's made up his mind

which one he wants
and he, he was moving fast.

At any moment,
the gator could turn towards me,

so I'm having to think really quick,
"What do I do? What do I do?

How do I, how do I survive this?"

But, it's going for Matt and Abraham,
one of those two.

I'm thinking, "What do I do now?"

I knew could go underwater, stay still as
possible, and the gator would leave me be.

But at the same time, when I looked
at Matt and Abraham, I was thinking,

"They wouldn't have a shot to make it out
if the gator got to them."

They're already in shock, they're already
starting to sink.

When I looked at Abraham, he just stopped
moving.

So if anyone could come out, probably
unscathed, it might have been me.

And I was thinking,
"If it k*lled one of my friends,

then I'd have to live with that for the
rest of my life."

I couldn't live with
that.

So, I wanted the gator to come towards me,
I wanted it to leave them alone,

give them a chance to go,
and that's when I started splashing.

[splash]

TELLEZ: That alligator could've thought,
"Is that head-slapping I'm hearing?"

So head-slapping, it is a way
to communicate to another opponent

how big you are.

So crocodilians communicate with
each other acoustically or physically,

so that head slapping
is just kinda saying,

"Hey, this is my territory, I want
to fight you for this territory,

are you up to the challenge?"

[splashing]

FRED: When it finally started
turning towards me,

they started to swim back.
That's when I looked at the gator,

and started coming up with a plan of what
to do next.

GARY: Fred started to backpedal,
not really trying to swim away,

keeping his eye on him,

started just backing up, trying to make it
to the bank.

The gator was moving too quick. He wasn't
gonna outrun him.

FRED: Once I see the gator changes his
direction and he's coming straight at me,

his eyes are locked onto me,
that's when I started laughing,

I'm like, "Oh, my biggest fear
is coming true.

I'm either gonna lose a limb or die today.
No getting out of this unscathed."

You can either go out screaming or like a
champ, and I'd rather go out like a champ.

NOAH: I've been a night owl my whole life,
being outdoors,

[cicadas buzzing]

there's something
about when the sun goes down,

it's just, everything
is a little bit more enjoyable.

It's dark. The moon's lit behind you,
and something about it is just...

It keeps you in the moment, yeah.

Anything that keeps me in the moment
is something I enjoy.

NARRATOR: Northern Minnesota,

the serene and vast woods
of Chippewa National Forest.

People venture here
from all across North America,

to enjoy fishing, camping,
and an abundance of wildlife.

People like Noah Graham, who was here
with friends on a camping trip,

as they enjoy their last summer
before college.

My name's Noah Graham.
I'm 24 and from Bemidji, Minnesota.

Growing up, we were outside all the time.

We would go fish and hunt. We would stay
up all night, watch the sun go down.

Then we'd hang out outside,
have campfires and s'mores,

and we'd watch the sunrise in the morning.

Always been kind of confident,
but kinda insecure,

if I'm in a group or crowd of people,
I get really uncomfortable.

[laughing]

But camping is great
because you're one-on-one.

I can get to know people.
And as soon as I know you, I'm good.

NARRATOR: It's the summer of 2013.

Noah is hoping to get to know
- his new girlfriend,
- Rachel,

better before they head off to college.

He invites her to Winnie Campground,
a secluded lake front campsite.

Joining them are friends Max and Jamile.

We went and set up camp.
We had a cooler full of food.

Rachel wanted to sleep outside,
so she gets in her sleeping bag.

And I had never been here, to this
campground before.

Jamile was from Chicago, and I think he
had moved to Minnesota that year.

This was his first camping trip. And so
the whole time, we were making fun of him,

I mean constantly, like, "Oh man,
there's animal attacks all the time."

And all of us, I mean more comfortable in
the woods than anywhere else,

and would never think that,
but with him, we're like,

"There's animal attacks all the time. You
got to be so nervous.

And we got to stay together as a group

'cause if somebody ventures off, they're
out there, they're ready to get you."

NARRATOR: With sundown approaching,
Noah and Rachel go for a walk

along the peaceful shores
of Lake Winnibigoshish.

NOAH: And so, Rachel and I went for a
walk.

So there's like a trail that goes
down to a boat dock

that goes onto the lake.
We were walking slow, I'm sure talking.

We'd been together for probably seven
months, so we're still butterflies

and romance and just so excited
about one another.

We get back to the campsite,
got campfire started,

got the food all kinda spread out,
hot dogs and burgers

and chips and then
just chilled after that.

Once the fire is lit, it's just time to
relax.

Everything else in life is always
busy and go, go, go, which I love,

but the whole point of camping is just to
unwind and just relax, and taking it easy.

And so we were probably just
hanging out, talking, telling stories.

NARRATOR: It's getting late and the four
campers call it a night.

Max and Jamile retire to their tents,

Noah and Rachel choose
to sleep outside by the fire.

They get cozy.

NOAH: We're both up with our elbows on
the ground, looking at each other.

We're holding hands and it's
a beautiful night,

campfire still flickering behind us,

the lake's right in front of us, with
the moon over the lake.

A romantic setting. We were talking for
probably half hour, we're sitting there.

I'm looking right into her eyes, right
into her face.

She's right next to me, and all of a
sudden her face just goes white.

I see her eyes just get this big,
and then she just screams.

All of a sudden, its jaws are on me,
and I am just drug backwards.

NARRATOR: Something has its jaws
around Noah Graham's head,

dragging him into the darkness
of the woods.

His girlfriend, Rachel,
can only watch in horror.

As soon as it bites,
it's like chills, just wham,

slammed with it, and the
hairs up on the back of my neck,

the tension through your body
is through the roof.

NARRATOR: Doctor Joanna Lambert is a
professor of wildlife ecology

at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

A carnivore expert, she knows
there are a number of animals

that could have a hold of Noah.

So at the end of August
in Northern Minnesota,

there would have an array of carnivores,

certainly would've been
black bear, coyote.

There are mountain lion
and also red fox and gray wolves.

NOAH: And in my head, I'm like,
"Is it a bear, a dog?"

All I can hear is a big growl
right when it bit me.

I could feel the breath on my neck.
I had no clue what's on me.

LAMBERT: His brain is rapidly trying to
assess what's going on back there,

Noah would've known the animals
in the area. He's a hunter.

- [growls]
- [screams]

It's either not big enough
or it's bigger than something else.

I'm pulling away from it and can't get
away. It's got me locked in.

I reach behind me and feel the fur
of its nose in my right hand,

and in my left hand is its lower jaw.

I gotta get this thing off me. There's
no like hyper-awareness.

Nothing's moving slow, in the moment,
I'm just flying by the seat of my pants.

So I push with this arm, as hard
as I can, and it twists my head out,

and so its teeth just drag right
across the back of my head.

I don't feel any pain, I don't feel,
hardly pressure.

As soon as I tear it off of me,
I immediately hit the ground, jump up.

I turn around, and right there
is this tall lanky ugly wolf.

NARRATOR: Canis Lupus, the gray wolf.

From teeth to tail,
55 million years of evolution

have fashioned a relentless hunter.
Canines for ripping flesh,

excellent night vision and long legs
for chasing down prey.

These top predators are highly social,

hunt in packs and take down large game
like bison, elk, and moose.

But humans are not part of a wolf's diet.

LAMBERT: It's extraordinarily rare
that Noah was even attacked.

And it was the first confirmed case

of an attack by a wolf
on a human in Minnesota.

NOAH: In my head, I know if I turn and run
from this thing, I can't deal with it,

'cause I'm looking away from it,
I have no idea where it's at.

If you run, you are prey basically,
and they'll come after you.

LAMBERT: There are a few behavioral
elements of this case that are unexpected.

Wolves, they're adapting for,
for running after their prey,

they're not sit and wait
stealth ambush predator.

The fact that this wolf kinda crept up,
right off the bat, that's unusual.

The fact that this animal was alone
when wolves are an evolved social species

that do better when they are in packs.

Why would a solo, lone,
adult gray wolf attack a human?

And so I have to be turned around
and facing this thing.

I need to know exactly where this thing is
at, and what it's doing.

I need to get it out of here
as soon as possible.

NARRATOR: 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 stuff I've already
thought about ahead of time,

because I'm in water all the time.

I'm in Florida, you better expect
to see a gator sometime in your life.

So, "How am I gonna handle this?"

When I see him coming,
in my mind, I know I can't outrun him,

I know can't beat him in a straight-up
fight,

so my only option is to tire him out and
hold him until 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,
a crocodile, or another predator,

the last thing you wanna 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 wanna come towards me?
Well, it's not gonna be an easy fight."

[dramatic music]

FRED: When he got probably
five yards away,

I prayed, I said, "Lord,
make me fast and give me agility."

And when I saw him coming,

I'm like, "First move he's gonna do
is go underwater."

So I started taking long, deep breaths,
fast as I could,

to get as much oxygen
in my bloodstream as possible.

[quick breathing]

TELLEZ: 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 at an advantage over Fred.

GARY: 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,

sitting there for like
five seconds, ten seconds,

which seems like a short time,
until you're sitting there

and it's a long time of waiting.

He's probably about three 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.

[dramatic music]

FRED: When the gator is coming towards me
and he's right here,

his head is facing towards me,
his mouth is closed,

and I was trying to guess about his size,
so my guess was he might be six foot.

That's when my adrenaline kicked in,
and I reached up underneath his mouth.

There's a flap there.
I grabbed hold, and I pushed up.

But by me pushing up, he's moving so fast

that, now, by the time I got
his head up, it's now here.

I take my right hand and put it on top of
his mouth to keep it shut

because I've got the bottom jaw,
now I need the top jaw down.

At this point, Fred thinks
he's up against a six-foot alligator.

A six-foot alligator,
that's still a lot of muscle

that can do a lot of damage

and even a six-foot alligator
latches on to you, does a death roll,

it's gonna 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."

And at the same time, "You're way bigger
than I thought you were."

So my plan to begin with,
that's out the window.

NARRATOR: 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 legs wrapped around him,

he makes a straight dive towards
the bottom, eight to ten yards.

[rippling water]

GARY: And then it just went calm.

You couldn't see anything.
The 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,
"Y'all guys, get out,"

'cause, you know,
it's a done deal basically.

We don't know if Fred's coming up
or not at that point.

[dramatic music]

NARRATOR: The calm on the surface
of the Caloosahatchee River

is deceptive.

Twenty feet below, Fred Langdale
is in a fight for his life.

FRED: The way I was 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 kinda 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's about to do a death roll.

For an alligator or 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 made it around probably two spins

and on the third spin,
I felt myself loosing grip,

because he was moving faster
than I could hold on.

So I pushed off and kicked off
of him as hard as I could,

tried to kick away in the water to get as
much distance between me and his mouth.

We were just kind of stopping
and we're eyeing each other a second

and then he takes off into the water.

As deep as I was,
it was just pitch black all around.

There was a 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,
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 then push him 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 can feel my pinky touch his tongue.

And to a gator, that's
the wire of the trap.

As soon as you touch that, trap goes off.
His mouth shuts down.

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 seven yards in the water,

something like that
and I could feel the bones

start to kind of crack,
but I couldn't feel the pain.

That's either God working to help me
through that or it was the adrenaline.

I started to think, "What do I do now?"

I slowly started kicking my legs

my left hand to get to the surface,
and when I got up to the surface,

I took a couple breaths and I could feel
his weight pull me back down.

And I prayed, 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 gonna pop up or not.

So once it went calm,
there's nothing we could do.

Pitch-black water,


you're not finding him.
There's no helping.

NARRATOR: The alligator holds Fred
under by his arm, drowning the prey.

I have accepted that

I was probably not gonna make it
out of the river that day

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 Johnnie, 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.

That's the only two outcomes
here that I could see.

At that moment, a voice in my head told
me, "Rip your arm off."

"Well, that's the best option I got,
so might as well go with it."

NARRATOR: In the Chippewa National Forest
of Northern Minnesota,

Noah and his girlfriend, Rachel,
are in a stand off with a gray wolf.

NOAH: I had a thought in
the back of my head

that this thing is not getting Rachel,
and so I knew that, just from hunting,

you got to make a lot of noise
if there's a predator around,

and usually they'll run and usually they
haven't already bit you,

so, I don't really know what I'm doing.

But I'm screaming as loud
as I can, making noise,

just looking directly at this wolf
and screaming like I'm angry with it,

but try to intimidate it.

For most predators in general,
the worst thing to do is to run.

It's also not ever a good idea
to turn your back,

so just getting big, putting up your arms,

yelling and being as generally
sort of fierce as possible is

exactly what one should do
under those circumstances for sure.

NARRATOR: Terrified, Rachel backs
away from the battle.

Friends Max and Jamile are
asleep in tents,

unaware of what's going on.
Noah is on his own.

Its back legs are up in the air,
its front legs are on the ground.

Its head's down really low,
and it's kinda snarling.

I run at it, and I kick it right in the
head, and it's still there,

it's just right in front of me,
acting very strange.

Why is this thing not running away?

LAMBERT: When an animal, like a gray wolf,
would allow a human to get that close

and then actually make contact

means that, potentially,
its reflexes had been reduced.

It's not jumping back.

NARRATOR: The strange behavior

suggests a possible neurological issue
with this wolf.

LAMBERT: Wolves carry all of the diseases.

Rabies can result in unusual behaviors.

Because it's affecting the brain,

all kinds of aspects
of an animal's behavior are impacted.

It loses motor coordination.

A rabid animal or potentially an animal

with canine distemper are not
unreasonable conclusions to jump to.

And I run and I kick it again,
kinda in the mid-section of the wolf

and it just slowly turns
and it's walking towards the woods,

with its head turned and looking at me
the whole time, and not running.

This thing is slowly walking away from me
and looking back at me

so I'm just unsettled.
My head is just soaking in blood,

it's dripping down my back,

kinda onto my shoulders
and my brain is shutting down.

[gurgling]

NARRATOR: At the bottom
of a Florida river,

Fred Langdale's arm is trapped
in the jaws of an 11-foot alligator.

Running out of air,

he decides his only hope is to rip
his arm off to free himself.

So I'm thinking, "How do I get
the gator to do another death roll?"

I'll take my hand, I'll start hitting him
in the eye

because now I want him to react,
I want him to fight me.

With an 11-foot alligator,
you're talking about a bite force

that is about 1900 pounds per square inch.

The majority of that is coming
from the largest teeth.

So you have more the canine in the front

as well as this particular molar
in the back.

During a death roll, the alligator will go
ahead and turn its head to the side,

just a little bit,
to kinda get that momentum

and once it feels it's able
to kinda get that torque,

it will start spinning very,
very quickly towards the other side.

FRED: I feel his body start to
twist again. I'm like,

"Okay, you're about to do a death roll,"
so when he rolls to the right,

I roll to the left, to try to twist
my arm to break the bone,

the skin, whatever, try to get it free.

I can feel and hear the snap, crackle,
pop of the bones, but no pain.

NARRATOR: Separated by the river
with no safe crossing,

Gary and his friends have no way
of helping Fred,

all they can do is watch.

GARY: We're all looking at the water,
we're all praying.

At that point, I was convinced
Fred was gone.

His mouth was like this,
so I put a foot on each side

and pulled and ripped
until I could get free.

Once I thought I was free, I started
swimming to the bank,

that we were first swimming to.
I was probably maybe 20 yards away.

And I was like, "Man, I didn't think it'd
be this hard to swim with one arm."

I looked back and my funny bone
is still attached to my hand

that's in the gator's mouth, and I was
dragging the gator with me,

when I was trying to swim to the bank.

When I stopped, I guess the gator
and me realized at the same time,

and he dove back down again
to do another death roll,

but this time I put a foot on each side
and made sure I broke everything free.

When I came up to the surface, I was
looking around to see where the gator was,

he came up seven yards away from me,
and he stayed there.

He was trying to swallow my hand,

so I got a couple seconds to get to the
bank before he can bite me again.

I swim slowly over to the bank,

'cause I don't want him to see
I've got that much energy left in me.

TELLEZ: One smart move that Fred did,

after the alligator grabbed
and ripped his arm off,

was that he moved slowly away,

as well as wasn't splashing a lot

to get more attention of this alligator.

Fred showed, "Okay, I lost.
I'm the weaker of the two."

And in a sense,
the alligator got its reward.

When I finally feel sand under my feet,

I switch to swimming with my left arm
to holding pressure on my right,

to stop the blood because I've lost an arm
so now I'm gonna be bleeding.

[shouting]

GARY: He's alive.

That was the best thing I could see
was him walking out

and I thought he still had his arm
and then I realized

it was just the skin hanging.

FRED: And I make it to the
top of the bank,

I look, and the gator is sitting
right where I came up.

He's waiting for me to bleed out so that
way he can just come up, without a fight,

grab me, take me down, push me under a
rock, and save me for later.

I look down, I saw him there and started
looking around for something.

And there's this Cypress tree
right where I came up,

and there's this big old
banana spider web in it,

and from growing up in the woods,
my parents would always tell me,

if the dog gets cut or if you get cut
and you don't have bandages or anything,

spider webs will stop the bleeding.

The banana spider webs are huge,
they get about like six feet in diameter.

I grab the spider web and pack it on
my arm. It's better than nothing.

Started taking slow deep breaths,
got my heart rate under control

I'm on the side of the road
and see a truck coming,

so I'm waving at it, trying
to get its attention.

And, it's one of my friend's grandpa,
so he's just waving back. I'm like, "No."

I pull out my arm and I'm pointing at it,
and he slams on his brakes,

gets out and I ask him,
"Do you have your p*stol on you?"

He's like, "No, I left the dang thing at
the house." I'm like, "Oh, okay."

[sirens]

FRED: The cops show up, they're going
back and forth looking for the gator.

If they can see and sh**t it,
they can get my hand out.

Which I know there's a certain amount
of time you've got, once you lose a limb,

if you get to hospital quick enough,
you can re-attach it.

By the time the cops pull up, the gator
was scared because of the sirens

and the cars pulling up and everything, so
he had done took off.

When I was sitting there, and the cops
were going back and forth

looking for the gator,
I'm like, "Does anyone got some gauze?"

Cause all I had was spider webs on the
end of my arm,

like, "Yeah, yeah," so they tossed it to
me and I'm holding it. I'm like,

"Can someone give me a hand?"
First one-handed joke, no one got.

NARRATOR: At a campsite in Northern
Minnesota,

Noah Graham is in a stare down
with the wolf that just attacked him.

NOAH: I take a couple steps back,
still looking into the woods,

and then it turns its head around
and just kinda saunters and trots off.

This is an animal just realizing

this is not any kind of victim
that I wanna be involved in.

This assessment
of the risks are too great,

and certainly wolves do that.

And if the deer or the elk
or the bison or whatever it is

that they're pulling down is
just too healthy or just too savvy,

wolves will just move on.

So the wolf's gone.
It's running through the woods.

I lose it really quick after that.

I reach my head, I'm just touching and
- feeling.
- I can't feel, there's no pain.

But I can feel
the puncture wounds on one side,

and I feel the gash across the back
of my head and I'm covered in blood.

NARRATOR: Though the attack may be over,
the danger from the animal is not.

The scariest piece
would've been the rabies part.

It's a very powerful, lethal virus,

but then there's also the risk
of just sort of bacterial intrusion.

There's all kinds of bacteria in the oral
cavity of every mammal species.

NOAH: So I reach down, grab the blanket
that we had had,

and I put it over my head.

and so I'm just kind of bewildered,
and Rachel wants to help me

in any possible way she can
so she is making sure my head is okay.

Jamile didn't wake up, but Max, he had
heard me, he had come running over.

As soon as I see him, immediately
I'm like, "So, is my head okay?"

and Rachel's right next to me,
he comes over, he gets the light on,

Pulls my hair away from where it happened,

"Yeah, we should probably go to the
hospital."

NARRATOR: In the darkness of night,

Noah, Rachel, and Max race to the nearest
hospital

about 45 minutes away, while
Jamile stays behind with their gear.

We got out of there pretty quick.
Max, he's probably going 80 the whole way,

and I'm, the whole time, like, "Why is he
going so slow?"

I just remember the presence of Rachel
there. She's just holding my hand,

and she is comforting me, and then Max
hands Rachel a roll of paper towels.

She gets kind of a wad of them. I take the
blanket off, put those on my head.

I can feel blood
seeping through the paper towels

I keep stacking paper towels on top of it,

and it's just soaking
through those paper towels.

I call my dad, I let him know
"Hey, I'm on my way to the hospital."

My dad calls a sheriff buddy of his, that
he knows,

told him that a wolf had attacked,
and they're like, "There's no way.

No way a wolf attacked you."
I'm like, "It was a wolf.

I'm sure it was a wolf."
They get people out there, right away.

LAMBERT: The local and
state wildlife officials

Division of Natural Resources, DNR,
would have taken this seriously.

This, in any case of an animal
attack on humans,

is taken seriously
and so they would have gone out

and they have been deployed

to the area, obviously, of where
the attack took place.

NARRATOR: Wildlife officials begin
tracking the wolf,

the plan is to eliminate the offending
wolf to prevent another attack.

For Noah, a long night is getting longer.

NOAH: Adrenaline wears off, the pain comes
through and I'm just like hurting.

All that pressure in my skull
were just like aching so bad,

this dull just rolling ache,
it just kept on going.

NARRATOR: The group finally reaches
Sanford Bemidji Medical Center

where Noah is immediately
admitted to the ER.

NOAH: We get to the hospital,
and nurses come in,

it's hurting, it's been getting worse and
worse, and the doctor comes to the room.

And the first thing he says
is, "Holy ****."

I haven't been numbed up at all or
anything.

He comes up and he starts pulling hair
out the wound, pulls the whole thing.

My skin is like wide open.
He like pulls that flap back,

sprays water, and he takes his fingers,
rubbing back and forth through it,

and that's like a nine out of ten of pain.

They come in and give me the staples.
It felt like my numbing stuff

was almost gone
because every staple I felt.

I had 18 staples, across that gash
on the back of my head.

After it's stapled, the nurse comes in,

bandages my whole head, gets everything
bandaged,

I'm about ready to get out of there, and
then the doctor comes in.

"Oh! We forgot
to give you your rabies shots."

I didn't know anything about rabies at
the time, I knew the shots sucked.

Rabies is frightening.

Rabies is almost 100 percent lethal,
and it's fast-acting.

It typically kills its host
within about a week.

It's just this big needle, you know,

and it's going in, over and over
and over and over, it hurt, just terrible.

When I got those shots, I didn't know
then that rabies goes to your brain.

So if you're bit on your arm,
it takes a while to get there.

If you're bit on your leg, but I'm bit on
the back of my head.

If it's in your head,
you gotta get shots quicker.

NARRATOR: Back in Florida,
paramedics arrive,

but the nearest hospital equipped
to handle such a serious injury

is almost 60 miles away.

Fred needs to be medevacked
by helicopter.

So we get to the only place in Moore Haven

you could land a helicopter,
which is the boat ramp,

right on Lake Okeechobee.

They get me loaded up in the helicopter,
first time I've been in a helicopter,

then 'cause it's Florida, it started
raining and lightning out of nowhere.

I'm like, "Okay, I've got my arm bit off.

And now I'm probably gonna be in a
helicopter crash.

Cause that's way this day is going right
now."

When the helicopter finally
lands at the hospital,

it's completely pouring
down rain now.

Still not feeling anything yet,
which surprised me,

because every time
I broke a bone, I've felt it,

and this, I broke an entire hand off,
so I should be feeling that,

but I still ain't feeling
nothing at that point.

NARRATOR: As Fred is transported
to the hospital,

local authorities deploy to find the gator
in hopes of retrieving the severed arm.

All the sheriff boats were out. After we
see they had two or three boats out,

there's probably nine or ten boats
in the river, going back and forth.

Fred got bit right at 2:00 p.m., 2:10,

and they didn't catch that gator
until like 6:15 that afternoon.

They pulled him in the boat
and cut his stomach open,

and then they confirmed
that was the gator that got Fred,

'cause his arm was still
inside his stomach.

They bring it back to the dock,
give it straight to the deputies.

The deputies put it on ice
and tried to haul it to the hospital,

to see if they could get it re-attached.

But too much time had elapsed.
It was in too bad a shape.

FRED: When I was laying in the hospital
and I woke up and it was gone,

that was like,
"Yeah, it's not coming back."

Most people asked me, "When did you come
to grips with losing your hand?"

I'm like, "When the gator
latched on to it."

I was in 30 foot of water
with which now I know

is about 11-foot gator attached to...
well, the bottom of my forearm.

I'm like, "There's no opening that up,

So I'm either gonna die or lose my hand,
so I'd rather just lose the hand."

Actually, the gator doing the death roll,
twisting and thrashing around,

it helped clean my arm and
clean the wound.

That water helped save my life
or the rest of my arm.

Then with me swimming the first time
and the gator diving back down,

it still helped clean out the arm
and the bacteria on it.

Two, three days, they had me on a lot
of medicine, and on the third day,

they went to close it up,
but the bone, how it was broken,

it was sharp and pointy, and
you can't have that,

because if I go hit something,
I could break the skin.

So they had to grind down the bone,
and they'd put a stent or something

in my nerve to block all the feeling
in my arm while they did it,

but they stopped
giving me pain medication.

So when that stent wore off,
I felt everything that they did.

So I woke up screaming
and hollering in pain. I was like,

"Ah, no, just give me something to take
me down. I don't wanna live this, no."

So it was after that third day was when
I started to feel pain, and it hurt.

NARRATOR: After surviving a gray wolf
attack in the woods of Northern Minnesota,

Noah receives 18 staples
in the back of his head

and returns home to recover.

NOAH: The next day, when I woke up,

there was people there,
like the newspaper, people from TV.

But next couple days, it was just
media, media, media, media, non-stop.

Now to the remarkable story
of a Minnesota teenager,

who survived an incredibly rare
wolf attack while on a camping trip.

REPORTER: This is the first-ever wolf
attack in the state of Minnesota.

There have been only two documented deaths

attributed to wolves
throughout the rest of the continent.

NARRATOR: As media kick into gear,

so does the Division of Natural
Resource's pursuit of this lone wolf.

REPORTER: Minnesota state wildlife
officials have

tracked and euthanized the wolf
and are now testing it for rabies.

If an animal is emboldened enough
and aggressive enough

that it has actually attacked a human,

there's no three strikes
and you're out in those cases.

Those animals are destroyed.

NOAH: When the DNR tested the wolf,
and it did not have rabies.

Okay, it didn't have rabies,
so what in the world was wrong with it?

The guy was telling me this, "Yeah,
when we were looking into it,

it looks like it have a jaw deformity.

It might have brain damage,

but he wasn't like,
"Yeah, this is what caused it."

LAMBERT: Outlined in a forensic analysis
and a necropsy,

this animal had obviously
sustained a traumatic injury.

There's a description of the skull
that indicates that this region,

all throughout here,
including these teeth were malformed,

the snout of the animal
was completely distorted.

Most of the brain in the actual
brain case,

so in this area right here,
was virtually non-existent.

It is brain damaged, and there is a chance

that this wolf literally didn't have
enough cerebral matter,

cognitive ability to assess
that Noah was a human.

NARRATOR: For Noah, the effects
of the attack lingered.

NOAH: In my head,
I'm always bewildered even still.

I can't believe that happened. That is so
weird that happened to me.

That first year afterwards,
if I wanna go out hunting,

I'd be out in the morning and I would have
that feeling the whole time,

from the time I leave, to the time
I get to my deer stand

it's like there's something right there,
and there's nothing there.

And then eventually,
it just kinda slowly wore off.

There's a prey feeling in your head,

like something is out to get me
all the time, and that's gone now.

I've never been angry
with the wolf, I've never thought,

"That stupid thing, if that would never
had happened,"

And in my life, if something bad
happens, it happened.

There's nothing I can do
about it. That's okay.

We can't change it. It's an animal.

I don't blame it in any way.

NARRATOR: After narrowly escaping
an alligator attack,

Fred Langdale's forearm
is unable to be re-attached,

doctors perform multiple surgeries
to save what's left.

I was in the hospital, probably
I think, a week.

Everyone in the town pretty
much came to visit me.

It helped distract
me from the pain.

I'd get to joke with them and stuff like
that, which is what I wanna do.

I wanna joke, I wanna have fun,
but when I got home,

and I was just trying to
rest and everything,

that's when it got worse because, when
your brain has nothing to think about

and you're hurting a little bit somewhere,
you think about that pain.

Thinking about it makes it even worse,

and there would be times
I'd be alone in my room

and I would be in so much pain
that it would make me angry,

which isn't normal for me.

There was a time I was laying in my bed,
having a pity party for myself

I'm going, "Well,
I can't do this, I can't do that."

But at the same time I was thinking, "You
can adapt to any situation you want,

you can do whatever you want,
if you put your mind to it."

Well, I love to fabricate, I love to
build stuff,

so one thing I wanted to learn
was electronics.

So I built a gaming computer
and figured out

how to make a one-handed game pad or
something like that.

You put your hand on it,
got access to all the keys.

You can program the keys. "Okay if I take
that, combine it with a mouse,

I've got a one-handed
controller for the computer."

So I started to realize as long
as I'm focusing on something,

I don't really notice the pain.

Back when there weren't that many
people in Florida,

the gators would see someone
and they would take off.

Now that their environment
is getting smaller and smaller,

you got more housing developments, more
communities popping up here and there,

the gators have got nowhere else to go
but in your backyard.

And your backyard,
which used to be swamp or woods,

where raccoons and possums
would live, breed, and feed the gators,

well, now it's your dogs,
or your kids, or you.

The gators now, they're adapting
to an increase of people in Florida.

The gator that got me, it had been
reported by the city,

I think, at least three times.

I'm pretty sure that
the gator came after me that day,

one was that I'd been told

that the gator
had been fed before by someone.

Someone had fed it or like dumped...
We're a bit of a hunting community.

After you skin an animal,
you've got plenty of leftover parts,

and they were dumping the leftover parts
in that part of the river.

So it's acting as chum. The gators
knew there was food in that area.

And another part was that

the river at the time
was heavily infested with gators.

We need to be careful
on the terminology that we use.

This alligator
was not a nuisance alligator.

This alligator was habituated.

When you directly or indirectly feed
alligators, bears, or any wildlife,

you are making this animal
lose its fear of humans.

And that's when conflict can arise,
and it is possible

that Fred could still have his arm today,
if people were not feeding this alligator.

And in some scenarios, people think
that by feeding the alligators

or the crocodiles,
that you're helping this animal.

You're not. You are
making this animal habituated.

It's gonna lose its fear,
attack a person, and guess what?

That animal is gonna have to be k*lled
because of your bad actions.

FRED: I was riding around town one day
and was like,

"Let me ride to the boat ramp,
see if I know anyone up there,

and I can sit and talk with
them for a little bit."

I saw this dad, and he had
two little kids.

He was feeding the gators.
"Hey, you know that's ill*gal, right?"

He's like, "So, what's worst that could
happen?" I'm like, "This.

The gator that bit me, someone
was feeding it,"

All the blood drained from his face.

He knew he could not open his mouth
to utter another word.

He got his kids,
got in the truck, and they left.

Facebook, Instagram,
gotta have a photo of a gator

that they've personally took
to put on Instagram,

so they can get likes or hearts
"Oh gosh, that's so cool."

What they don't realize is when
they're feeding that gator,

to get the gator to come up,

is that they're teaching the gator
that we are food now,

we will give them food or we are are food.

Gator doesn't care.
It just wants to eat. It's a dinosaur.

Everyone knows how Jurassic Park ends
and I don't have a hatred for him,

I was in the wrong place at the wrong
time, gator was hungry, fighting for food.

I fought for my life that day.

Now I have a wife and a child on the way.

I'm gonna teach him
how I was taught when I was little.

You're put on this Earth
and so are all the other animals.

The Earth doesn't belong to you.
You belong to it, so you need to co-exist.

The only thing I really miss
about having two hands is clapping.

Yeah, golf clap.