Eric Merda – 3 days in a swamp with an arm missing

On Monday morning July 18, 2022, a small white work van carrying Eric Merda was making its way through the back lanes of Manatee County on the way to a job he had in the area. It didn’t take him as long as he thought and he had nothing planned for the rest of the day, so a small sign that read Lake Manatee fishing camp caught his attention.

The fishing camp itself was situated on Lake Manatee, a man-made reservoir with a surface area of 9.713 km². He made his way down a long dirt track towards the water which ended at a small boat ramp where he left his van. Since he didn’t have any fishing equipment with him and hadn’t actually planned to do anything in particular, he decided to start picking up all the trash people had left in the area and collected it into piles.

After working for quite some time, he decided to go for a walk in the woods which surround the entire lake but seemed to have forgotten, or didn’t care that he left his phone in the van. He started to explore for a couple of hours before he found himself in a huge orange grove, with endless rows of trees that all looked the same. It was at this point he realized he was lost and walked around the grove for a while looking for someone who could help him, but came across nothing more than trees.

(Lake Manatee, a popular tourist spot for fishing and kayaking, but also home to wild animals like alligators, turkeys and osprey)

The only option at this point was to turn back and try to find the van again, but because he had been walking around the orange grove for so long, he was far from the point where he came out of the woods. In his best guess, he headed into the trees at what he thought was close to the lake but found himself wading into a thick swamp. By now it was late afternoon and he didn’t have much light left, so he carried on and eventually had to take off his boots because they kept filling with water and bits of plants that hurt his feet.

Going barefoot didn’t work very well either and his feet became badly scratched and sore enough to go back to the painful boot option. Just as darkness approached, he made his way to the water line and could see the boat ramp and his van on the other side of an inlet into the lake. He had two options at this point, one of which was to go back through the swamp in the dark, or try and make the short swim to the other side.

The swamp wasn’t going to happen and he knew he was a strong swimmer, so he started to wade into the cold water and began the swim to the other side. He didn’t expect the lake to have such a strong current, which is created by the many streams flowing into it, and quickly found himself being pushed off course. He got rid of all his clothing to make it easier to swim, but still struggled to make progress in the right direction.

It was at this point he caught a quick flash of the nose of an alligator, but before he had time to react, it sank its teeth into his forearm and dragged him underwater. Merda quickly grabbed the alligator with his other arm and tried to hold on but after a short period of fighting, it began to barrel roll and Merda’s arm was torn off at the elbow. He began to swim as fast as he could back to where he entered the water, and luckily the alligator had lost interest and wasn’t following him, seemingly satisfied with what it had.

(Alligators have a bite strength of around 2,000 pounds per square inch, in comparison, a lion has around 600 pounds psi)

He made it to the bank and sat down gasping for air, which is when the pain finally set in. He knew he was dangerously close to death so started to shout for help as loud as possible, but no one answered. He was too exhausted to go anywhere so he moved under a large tree and sat there until dawn came.

In the morning he saw two small planes fly over but neither of them saw him, and his continued cries for help remained unanswered. He decided to walk along the shoreline toward the boat ramp but didn’t get very far due to thick grasses and submerged logs, but the thing that finally made him stay out of the water was when he realized an alligator was stalking him. He followed the water line by land for as long as he could until he found a small concrete building that seemed to be part of the reservoir, but it was already close to dark and he was cold and naked, so he slept there for the night.

He woke a few hours before dawn to find his good arm hanging off the side of the floor and dangling above the water. This made him wake up fast and he was in too bad a condition to wait, so he set off into the tall swamp grass close to the water line in the direction of the ramp. He eventually came to dry land, with the plants changing from tall grass to a thick wall of thorns. This was the first dry land he’d seen since losing his arm so he chose the thorns over going back into the swamp, wading through the thick spikes with no clothes on, and trying to fight off the clouds of flies trying to get at his arm stump.

It took him several hours to make it through the thick trees and patches of overgrown thorns, having to stop many times along the way to recover from the pain. Eventually, he came across an old beer bottle laying on the floor and thought someone must have thrown it from the road. With a new sense of hope, he powered forward and came across a tall chainlink fence with a man standing on the other side behind his car.

“Hey”, shouted Merda to the surprised stranger who turned to see a naked man covered in blood with a severed arm. “You got any water?” he asked the stranger, who told him he’d get him some and immediately called an ambulance. The Emergency response team had to cut through the fence but got to Merda and took him straight to Sarasota Hospital.

He spent just under three weeks there but his arm had become infected in the swamp and the surgeons had to remove more than the alligator had taken. He was left with about 6 inches of arm past his shoulder but otherwise made a full recovery and left the hospital to start the rest of his life.