FORT MYERS, Fla. — A man says he is lucky to be alive after a quiet night of fishing turned into a fight for his life when an alligator showed up in his backyard.

The gator dragged 71-year-old James Grayson McMicken into the water, but he used one trick to make the animal let go.

“I’m going to do everything I can not to die,” McMicken said.

McMicken said it was a routine Friday night. He took his bulldog out, grabbed his fishing pole and made one cast into the canal behind his north Fort Myers home.

“I started reeling, and it jumped out of the water and grabbed me,” he said.

McMicken said the gator clamped down on his right leg and pulled him into the water.

“He rolled me down off the bank into the water,” he said. “I stuck my thumb in one eye.”

He said he then grabbed his fishing pole and fought back.

“I just took that fishing pole and jabbed him in that other eye and jabbed him and jabbed him and jabbed him,” he said. “It seemed like forever, but it wasn’t that long. But then he turned loose.”

“I’ve always heard that if you got no other choice, hit them eyes. And that’s what got him off of me,” McMicken said.

McMicken said he’s legally hunted alligators before and that experience taught him how to survive the attack.

He said once the gator let go, he made a quick decision.

“I’d have never made it crawling this far, so I called my dog over, and she stood there and let me get up on her back to where I could get stood up,” he said.

When he made it inside his home, his wife cleaned him up.

“Then I sat down in my chair and passed out,” he said. “I was so exhausted.”

His family rushed him to Cape Coral Hospital, where he said he became a novelty.

“All the nurses on the floor had to come by and go, ‘Wow, you did what?’” he said.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the attack happened last Friday. Officers and state-contracted trappers have yet to find the gator.

But McMicken has one thing to say.

“No gator is going to run me off,” he said.

McMicken is now recovering at home and starting physical therapy. He hopes to be back out fishing soon, although he said he’ll never head to the water’s edge at night the same way again.

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