‘Beware of Alligators’
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This episode is brought to you by Honda. When you test drive the all-new Prologue EV, there's a lot that can impress you about it. There's the class-leading passenger space, the clean, thoughtful design, and the intuitive technology. But out of everything, what you'll really love most is that it's a Honda. Visit Honda.com slash EV to see offers. May 30th, 2021. Sarasota County in Southwest Florida, USA. Dragonflies and mosquitoes buzz across the Meaka River.

It's an ancient, slow-moving waterway that meanders through three counties, draining into 600 square miles of swamp and wetlands before flowing out into the Gulf of Mexico. 25-year-old Jeffrey Heim stands on the riverbank, taking in his surroundings. Longleaf pines and cypress trees crowd the opposite bank, their overhanging branches heavy with Spanish moss. He takes a deep breath. The humid air is sticky and warm, but he knows the water will be bracingly cold.

So at this point in the Myakka River, the river is about

30 meters wide, and it's pretty wild. There's not many humans around in this sprawling nature preserve. It's very wild, very natural, and very beautiful. But the water is murky. He slowly trudges deeper into the river, pushing away the slime and algae. When he's in up to his chest, Jeffrey pauses and glances around again. The water is still and peaceful, pond-like. He takes another deep breath.

before plunging down into the gloomy depth. Ripples fan out in his wake. They undulate slowly across the surface, then gently dissipate against the opposite bank. It's here, concealed among the cypress roots and marsh grasses, that a knobbly black snout rises slowly out of the water. If Jeffery could see it, he might mistake the dark shape for a piece of driftwood, were it not for the unblinking yellow eyes.

At the time that I dove this river, it was the third river I have dove. But I didn't know that this was known as a much more dangerous river than the others that I had dove in the past. With an elegant sweep of its tail, the creature shoots forward, gliding effortlessly through the water. Then it slips silently beneath the surface. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes?

If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet 25-year-old Florida native Jeffrey Heim, a personal trainer by day. Jeffrey spends every minute of his free time pursuing his real passion, scouring the state's waterways for fossilized shark's teeth.

But on one river-diving expedition, he encroaches on the territory of a living, thriving predator. With barely time to think, let alone react, Jeffrey's survival will hinge on decisions made in the blink of an eye. The look she had in her eyes, I could tell she wanted to kill me. In this situation, I felt the reality of life and death at the hands of an apex predator. It will kill you and not think twice.

I'm John Hopkins. From Noisa, this is Real Survival Stories. It's May the 30th, 2021, Sunday afternoon. In Sarasota County, Jeffrey steps out of his car at the Snook Haven Waterfront Restaurant. The 90-minute drive from Tampa has taken them along the fringes of the sprawling subtropical wetland of Myakka State Park. It's hard to believe that this natural gem can exist in such close proximity to urban development. But that's Southern Florida for you.

Jeffrey appreciates the huge changes in the state's landscape and its natural habitats more than most. But as he runs his fingers over the gleaming shark tooth pendant around his neck, he can't help but be thankful for the ease of access that highways and parking lots provide when it comes to pursuing his obsession. Shark teeth was my passion and I looked for shark teeth every single weekend.

I love the hunt of finding them, make a lot of jewelry from it. And it's just the thrill of the hunt. And to me, it's very primal, the experience that I have with it. I can't replicate that joy any way else in my life. Like some people like to drink or go out or anything like that. I would so much rather be looking for shark teeth than really any other activity in my life. No two are the same as well. So it's like a snowflake and I'm

It's just so much joy with finding each. Some of the teeth that Jeffrey uncovers are from shark species that populate Florida's coastal waters today. But others can be thousands or even millions of years old. Petrified husks that once resided in the jaws of gargantuan prehistoric sea creatures. Florida once looked very different. In fact, there was a time when it didn't exist at all. The landmass was covered by an ancient sea where the ancestors of whales and sharks once thrived.

As the peninsula emerged, it captured the remains of these mega beasts in its soil, sands, and swamps. Florida specifically is one of the best places in the world to find fossils just because of the huge variation of fossils you can find here. It's the only place in the world, I believe, that you can find Ice Age fossils in the same land that you find marine fossils because Florida has gone...

above land and underwater many different times over history. It's two or three times it's been land and then ocean again and then land again and then ocean. Because it's gone above and below water several times, it's not hard rock that the fossils are in, so it's easier to erode typically. And there's very good preservation of fossils here in Florida. Jeffrey is fascinated by all kinds of shark teeth.

But what he prizes above all else is the crown jewel of shark fossils, the tooth of the largest aquatic predator ever to darken the ocean, the megalodon. What captivates me about megalodons is they get so big. This was the largest fish ever and way bigger than the great white.

These animals were as big as a school bus and their teeth are massive, their teeth are beautiful. And the detail on each tooth and the colors that can be present on the tooth. I mean, you can find every color on the rainbow on a shark tooth. It's really beautiful and fascinating. Usually, Jeffrey rents scuba gear and dives in crystal clear coastal waters where he can comb the seabed for hours at a time.

When he can't get underwater equipment, and if it's been raining, he can simply scour the beaches. Oftentimes, wet weather washes away the sandy muck and reveals the fossils beneath. Today, however, neither of these options were available. It hasn't rained in weeks, and it's too late in the weekend to hire scuba gear, which leaves him with no choice. If he wants to hunt for shark teeth, and Jeffrey always wants to hunt for shark teeth, he'll have to do so here, inland.

I had no other options to find shark teeth at that time of year. It's very dependent on the weather and the conditions and that was my only option. It was either stay home and watch TV or maybe have a chance at learning something more and finding even some small teeth. Free diving in rivers is certainly not his preferred method. The Miaka is considered a black water river, meaning visibility is extremely poor.

And without a scuba tank, Jeffrey's time at the bottom will be curtailed by his lung capacity. But it's not just the practical limitations of freediving. There's also the risk of running into a living fossil. Florida is also home to a species of primordial reptilian predators. Animals that have survived ice ages and asteroids: alligators. The state contains over a million of them. They can grow up to 14 feet in length.

Their massive neck and jaw muscles can generate a downward force of over 2,000 pounds per square inch, enough to bite through solid steel. Their specially adapted eyes mean they have natural night vision as well as inner eyelids that allow them to see through murky water. Their skin can detect subtle vibrations and their hearing is attuned to locate swimming prey. All in all, they are highly evolved, highly efficient aquatic killers.

But Jeffrey isn't about to be put off his mission. He's grown up around gators, even swum with them before. Just like sharks, he thinks of them as a manageable risk. Alligators usually aren't aggressive. To compare it to crocodiles, like if someone was diving in the rivers in Australia or like around the Nile River or anywhere that has crocodiles, those you are very crazy to dive around because they are aggressive. They will definitely attack humans. Alligators aren't considered aggressive

aggressive like that at all. Whereas saltwater crocs might see a human as prey, an alligator likely won't. But that doesn't mean it won't be capable of killing if it feels threatened. May through June is gator mating season. As females lay their eggs in nests along the riverbank, a mother will defend her hatchlings with deadly force. Today is May 30th. Jeffrey knows all this, but he's prepared to take a few risks in pursuit of the shark teeth.

He's also scuba dived in the Myakka River before and with good results. I did actually nose gator mating season, but I was too, at the time, I just was too willing to take a risk. And my edge at the time was, you know what? I'm willing to go in areas where other people aren't. I had found my best megalodon tooth there a couple months prior. So I just went where I thought I would have the best chances. And I knew they were there.

But what Jeffrey doesn't know is that this particular section of the Miaca is one of the most densely populated alligator habitats anywhere in Florida. As he strides out of the car park with his snorkeling gear, he marches straight past the large warning signs: "Beware of Alligators." They don't alarm him. He's seen them before. And humans are generally faster and keener-sighted than gators. It's partly why they don't see us as prey, at least on dry land.

Once you're in the water, it can be a different story altogether. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com. It's approaching 3.30 p.m.

Jeffrey spends a full 10 minutes prepping his gear while checking the water for reptiles. He sees none. The river is wide and slow moving, enclosed on both banks by tall palms, sagging cypresses, and a wall of thick ferns and knee-high grass. I was getting ready on the bank, putting on my wetsuit, mask, fins, snorkel. And yeah, I was casually looking around for alligators. It's very wild, very natural, and very beautiful. But the water is murky, so I had a light.

Just to be able to see. Jeffrey clips on his head torch and GoPro. If he does find anything noteworthy, he wants to capture the footage and post it on social media where he's trying to build a following. Jeffrey wades out into the shallows, his fins sinking into the muddy riverbed. He pushes off and swims out to the middle of the watercourse. He takes a last look around before taking a deep breath and diving beneath the surface.

He kicks with his flippers, descending 8, 10, maybe 15 feet. He reaches out, groping in the darkness, feeling his way until he gets to the bottom. The beam of his head torch cuts through the gloom. He scours the sandy bed for pockets of gravel where shark teeth might be lurking. I slip in, I go straight to the middle, I dive down looking for gravel. All I see is sand everywhere, so I'm covering the ground really quickly trying to

find gravel and I keep working my way back to the side of the river where I put in on which is on my right hand side I'm facing a little down river and the current isn't very heavy so I can go up river I can go down river and I go up and down a couple times because I need to breathe and hold my breath to see the bottom after searching for another minute or so Jeffrey comes up for air again he takes another look around just to be safe before diving back down

His lungs are just starting to protest when his torch lights up a promising patch of gravel. He hovers there, quickly feeling around for the telltale serrated edges of a tooth. Then, out of nowhere, he feels a powerful blow to the side of his head. I felt like I got hit by a boat and my first thought was where in the world did that boat come from? Because I didn't hear any motor. Normally you hear them coming from a long ways away.

but it felt like something really heavy, really big. It felt like a boat going 50 miles an hour and the propeller just smashed my head. His mask, torch, and snorkel are ripped off his face and Jeffrey is sent spinning into the darkness. He's stunned and his head is ringing, but he's vaguely aware of being pulled downwards. The murky water is a black shroud around him, preventing it from getting his bearings. His lungs are searing now with the pain of holding his breath.

He has to get to the surface, but he doesn't know which way he's swimming. He thrashes his limbs. His chest is going to burst. Instinctively, Jeffrey opens his mouth and inhales. Miraculously, rather than water, he gulps in a mouthful of fresh air. He only just made it to the surface in time. Luckily, I was able to have that first breath of air because if I just inhaled a bunch of water at the bottom there, it would have been a different story. Jeffrey treads water.

His eyes dart about in panic and confusion. What was it that struck him? Scanning around, he can't see a boat anywhere. Just the river, slowly turning red with blood. His blood. I have the time to feel my head, the right side of my head, which I feel this flap of hair sticking out horizontally that was ripped open on the side of my head. And it was flapping away from my ear, like further away from my ear.

He becomes aware of a shrill ringing in his left ear, along with a thumping pressure on the left side of his head. Then he sees something rising slowly out of the water, just six feet in front of him.

A scaly black snout with long dagger-like teeth, a saw-like spine, and glassy yellow eyeballs staring out from two narrow slits. So I saw her looking at me, I was like, "Oh, it was a gator." I'm lucky she gave me that second of us looking at each other. Maybe she was confused, but I was able to realize what was happening.

Time slows down as human and alligator eyeball each other, as if both are assessing which is hunter and which is prey. What he does in the next few seconds will determine whether Jeffrey lives or dies. Adrenaline and endorphins surge through him. His vision begins to blur at the edges as his mind blocks out everything except the 500-pound reptile directly ahead. It's somewhere between six and nine feet long, probably a female protecting her young.

In that split second, he recalls a piece of advice he was once given by a diving mentor. When face to face with a predator, don't panic. If you splash around, the animal will take you for prey and go in for the kill. Incredibly, Jeffrey manages to stay calm and follow that advice. He floats onto his back. Then he starts to gently push himself away with his flippers, trying to put a little distance between himself and the gator. Easy does it. But the reptile isn't done yet.

As slowly as he inches back, she follows him. Suddenly she surges forward, jaws open wide, taut muscles and sinew ready to clamp down. And then she lunged at me and I backed away carefully, relatively slowly, but outside of her bite, just still being as calm as I am right now. Just that's how I was trained, being around sharks. Still, Jeffrey keeps his composure, but staring into those reptilian eyes,

You can see that she only has one thing in mind. The look she had in her eyes, I could tell she wanted to kill me. I have been around alligators in the past and I'm really fascinated by them. I really like alligators and I never felt like my life was in danger in the past. But in this situation, I felt the reality of life and death at the hands of an apex predator. It will kill you and not think twice.

Most alligator victims don't die from bites per se, but from drowning. Given the chance, she'll grab an arm or leg in her jaws and go into a death roll, dragging him underwater until he stops struggling. If she gets him, he'll need to try to roll with her to prevent his limbs being torn clean off. At that point, his only hope will be to poke her in the eyes or bang the side of her head to disorient her. But having a plan is one thing. When an alligator keeps coming for you, instinct takes over

and theory goes out the window. And then she really lunges at me a lot more aggressively and I have to do much more of an athletic dodge here. My fins are out in front, facing her, I'm backed away with my head away from her. I had to move to the side and back away from that one and that's where I kept moving. I was like, "I really need to get out of here." Jeffrey blinks first. He turns and swims for his life. Thrashing through the water, with each stroke he expects to feel the gator clamping down on his leg.

but then a moment later he's scrambling up the riverbank back to solid ground he sits there panting trying to comprehend what just happened his hunter gives him one last glare then swims away the whole event has been and gone in mere minutes they're known as ambush predators for a reason but while he's made it to dry land jeffrey's not out of the woods yet i came back around to the right to the riverbank and the banks about

six, seven feet high. So I did have to climb out of there, take my fins off and start making, trying to make my way back to my car. - Time suddenly speeds back up, staggering towards his car through the tranquil woodland. It's almost like the attack never even happened, except it did happen. And while he doesn't yet feel the pain, the world is starting to swim before his eyes and blood is pouring down his face and neck. - Once I climb out of the river bank,

I started getting exhausted. Just immediately, my energy got wiped out from me. So it was a combination of the shock and blood loss, but I didn't make it many steps before I had to lay down. Approaching the parking lot, Jeffrey collapses to the ground, but soon he makes out a pair of hazy figures running towards him. The next thing he knows, he's staring up into the concerned faces of two passers-by.

As luck would have it, one of them is a former firefighter. He acts quickly to staunch the bleeding. And I'm lucky that I saw the good Samaritan Steven and Renee Rosenberger and then someone else called 911. Renee was able to go to my car and get my phone so I could call my parents. And I just laid down right there. Steven went right to that restaurant which shared the parking lot and got a first aid kit and started wrapping my head.

Jeffrey drifts in and out of consciousness. In his lucid moments, he replays the events of the last few minutes. The sudden shock of impact, the flash of black scales. With his injuries as they are, the gator must have had his entire skull between her jaws. He tries to read the faces of Renee and Steven to figure out how badly hurt he really is. I told them, I said, "Wow, I'm tired. I need to take a nap." And they said, "No, don't go to sleep. Don't go to sleep." So I stayed awake.

And then the next couple of minutes, I guess, are foggy. I don't remember too much. I'm asking him, how bad is it? How bad is it? And he's comforting me. And I could tell in his voice that he wasn't sure what was going on. And he was just trying to keep me calm. And I could hear it in his voice that he wasn't so sure of the outcome. No one was. I was just...

at the mercy of the situation and almost lifeless at that point. I was just so loopy. But during the two times where I almost passed out, that's where I felt like I could die right there because it just would have been lights out and there's nothing I could have done at all. I would have just slipped away and the rest of the world would have continued on without me. Jeffrey pulls out his phone and dials his parents' number. As he listens to the dialing tone,

It hits home that this could be the last time he speaks with his mom and dad. I said, "Hey, I got bit by an alligator in the head. I don't know how bad it is or whatever. My dad calls me a dumbass, not knowing how bad it is. And my mom's freaking out. And my mom probably thought it was worse than it was. And my dad probably thought it was better than it was at that time. But because I'm talking coherently, he doesn't think it's as bad as it is, I guess.

After the call, Jeffrey sends a text to a girl he's been seeing. I sent her a quick picture and short message. For context, I had met her six days before. Now we look back and because it's much more serious now, but at the time we just met each other. So I just said like, hey, miss you. You know, I thought that could be my last message. Finally, the ambulance got there.

It seemed like five, ten minutes or something. So it didn't feel like I was waiting forever and they loaded me up. In the ambulance, the paramedics prepare the hospital doctors over the radio. Alligator attack, head injury, blood loss, trauma alert. Jeffrey thinks of all the people in his life he suddenly wants to speak to. Rather than message them all individually, he decides to make a short video and post it on his Instagram story.

I couldn't, you know, besides my parents and girlfriend, I couldn't go down the line of people that mattered to me and let them know what happened. So I just put it on my Instagram story for everyone to see just to explain why I was there and what I was doing very quickly. But I made that video with the belief that it could be my last. The severity of the situation is slowly creeping up on me.

And the only good news that I have is, okay, I'm coherent. I'm talking for now. But when is that going to change? Once we arrived to the hospital, they said, okay, there's going to be a lot of people here looking at you. And there was about 20 total people lined up in like this little lobby. And then the whole way into the operating room, it was just people on both sides of me. The medics rushed the patients straight to the ICU.

While they prepare for an x-ray, the doctors attend to the head wound using a surgical staple gun. They start reattaching the severed section of Jeffrey's scalp. I heard every single one of those 34 staples, and it literally sounds like a stapler to your head. That's it. Like stapling a piece of paper, but into your head, and you feel that. But as the doctors examine the damage, optimism grows. The alligator struck him from behind, fracturing the bones in his left temple.

This is the weakest part of the skull and where a major cranial artery resides. But Jeffrey also has several large puncture wounds on his hands and wrist. He can't remember how these happened, but it's possible they took some of the force out of the bite. The alligator's teeth haven't penetrated his skull as deeply as they'd all feared. Half an inch deeper, he'd probably be dead. As they're stapling, they're like, "You know what? It might not be as bad as we thought." And once they finish up, they said,

Yeah, we think you're going to live. And that's when the emotion started creeping up from my feet, up my legs, up my torso, all the way up me. I just felt this extreme emotion start creeping up and just like I start crying like I had never cried before, like a baby, just with fear.

I guess relief and just joy. And it was a very religious and emotional experience for me. I said, I can't believe I'm going to live. So I just, I didn't start, I didn't stop crying for the next two hours. The doctors put him through a CT scan to check for internal injuries. Once he's been given the all clear, he's taken to a room where he can rest up. But he barely has time to catch his breath before he's visited by a concerned official from Florida's Wildlife Conservation Agency.

The governing entity is in Florida for wildlife is called Florida Fish and Wildlife or FWC. They had a representative in there right away who got a written account of what I was doing and what was going on. Because just for a safety perspective, like same thing with a bear attack. If there's a rogue bear out there harming people, it's just kind of a threat to public safety. So they had to get it removed just as an emergency.

It's mostly a blur, but Jeffrey recounts the incident as accurately as he can. Throughout the interview, he insists that he was at fault, venturing alone into alligator territory at this time of year. He begs them not to destroy the animal. Later, drifting in and out of sleep in his hospital bed, he looks up to find a more friendly face at his side. My mom came that night somehow. She was in the ICU with me. I don't know how she got there that quick.

My head is throbbing and then all of a sudden she was just there, but I was just exhausted, wiped out. Like that trauma just takes it out of you big time. As he drifts off, Jeffrey makes a promise to himself. His days hunting for shark teeth in Florida are over, for a month at least. I knew that I wanted to hunt for shark teeth as quickly as possible when I was healed up. It's always just been a constant.

In the wake of the attack, Jeffrey is approached by several local news stations to tell his story live on air. The media exposure gives him the chance to offer a warning to others, to learn from his mistakes. His business goes from strength to strength. He commits to donating part of his profits to wildlife charities. He also gains the attention of other shark-tooth hunters who invite him to join them on diving expeditions off the Florida coast. He doesn't hesitate to accept.

The Gulf of Mexico boasts abundant shark teeth. It's also alligator-free. His first outing comes just a month after the attack, a leisurely scuba dive in the ocean off Venice Island. So that was my first dive, and I did that a month after I got bit. And I was very excited for that. But I felt a lot safer because it wasn't the river. And two weeks later, I go right back there to the Gulf again for my second dive. And I find my six-inch megalodon, which is just...

It's so rare and so large. It's like finding, it's like winning the lottery. His dream of finding a massive Meg tooth has come true. And bizarrely, it never would have happened without the accident. It's a happy upside to a traumatic episode, though it takes a little longer to muster the confidence to return to diving in rivers. I didn't go back into that river or a river in general for another six months or so. But my first time back in the river,

I was definitely head on a swivel, just feeling as if something could sneak up behind me at any time. I did feel that, and I still feel that, the fact that in a split second, your whole world can be turned upside down, and you don't know when that's going to happen. When he does return, it's with a newfound respect and hard-earned humility. He knows he made several near-fatal errors.

Yes, I never dive alone and I never free dive. And I never go during alligator mating season. So those are all three things that contributed to my bite. He also learns that the alligator who attacked him had likely been conditioned to approach humans after being fed by diners and day trippers. This reduced caution, coupled with the primal instinct of a protective mother guarding her young, made it all the more likely Jeffrey would become a target that day. The experience just gave me a...

great perspective on life and just how valuable every single day is. It's a gift, but it also cemented my passion for finding Megalodon shark teeth. And it helped me realize, okay, this is what I'm here for. And I want to continue to make this bigger than just me finding them. So that was always my mission in the first place. I was always donating to shark conservation before this, but now it has helped me have a better platform to do that.

and in turn find bigger Megalodon shark teeth and share it with the world. In the next episode, we meet safari guide Paul Templer. He's a man whose job is as wholesome as they come, as he paddles entranced visitors up and down the beautiful Zambezi River. But one day, his tour party becomes the target of a ferocious attack from a terrifying bull hippopotamus. As panic descends, Paul must remain calm to navigate his own boat to safety.

But it's not just his life that hangs in the balance. He must do his utmost to ensure no man is left behind. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. If you can't wait till next week, hear Paul's story right now by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Click the Noiser Plus banner or the link in the episode description.