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A South Florida man has a long road to recovery after he was bitten in the leg by a crocodile at Everglades National Park over the weekend.
“I am feeling good because I am alive,” Rodrigo Constain told NBC South Florida on Tuesday after coming home from the hospital. “It’s a story that probably couldn’t be told.”
Constain fell into the water at the Flamingo Marina on Sunday when the wind knocked over his sailboat.
When he tried to get back inside the boat, Constain said he felt something holding onto his leg.
“I didn’t feel any pain, nothing,” he recalled. “I don’t know why.”
Constain said his intuition was to touch whatever was holding onto his leg. He then felt a long mouth and a head and tried to loosen the creature’s grip.
“I didn’t know what was holding me because I didn’t enter in panic,” he said. “I didn’t know … never I thought that it was a crocodile.”
The crocodile let go. Constain finally felt the pain hit as he swam back to the deck.
“I wasn’t panicking and I didn’t at all. I wasn’t afraid, I didn’t feel any panic,” he said.
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Rangers responded to the marina and found the 68-year-old with lacerations on his leg. Constain said his wife and the rangers saw the crocodile in the water from the deck.
It’s rare for an American crocodile to bite a human, The Associated Press reported. The only other documented case involving a crocodile biting a human happened in 2014, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesperson Lauren Claerbout told the news outlet in an email.
Constain was flown to Jackson South Hospital. He said doctors told him the wound went as deep as the bone, but it was a miracle that there was no fracture.
Doctors said it could take about a month for him to walk again.
“I don’t know how I’m gonna work since I’m a handyman,” Constain said.
His family established a GoFundMe for help with hospital bills. He said he’s thankful for the help he’s received so far.
“There’s only one reason that I’m here: It’s God,” Constain said. “If you’re not with God, I wouldn’t be here. He was all the time with me and that’s what I think. I was not afraid, because when you believe in God, you are not afraid.”
