Original subtitles

What you're about to see may be dangerous, illegal, unethical,

petty, misguided, immoral,

and most definitely stupid.

But it's also all true.

Sort of.

So, I ventured into the woods, and I come across this lake.

The water looks inviting.

So, I was swimming on my back.

There's three stars triangulating.

And I said, "That looks an awful lot like a gator."

It's the first time I realized there might be alligators in the lake.

I got scared. I look over, sure enough.

If you never wake, you can never dream.

But if you die, you're never gonna have a nightmare.

You've gotta live that nightmare to get through it to have a dream.

If any... any of that at all makes sense to anybody,

you're twice as crazy as I am.

I get to maybe be on TV. If not, I get to at least act like it.

Look at these guys. We're filming each other.

- How y'all doing this morning? - Good, how you doin'?

Good, good, man. I'll shut mine down.

That's just something for the family right there.

Man, you know, I haven't been out here since I lost my arm.

It was down that way somewhere. I came back across the fence.

It was over here where I jumped through.

My name's Eric Merda. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio.

I moved down to Florida, probably when I was five, six years old.

I would say I'm definitely a Florida Man.

Not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I'll stab you with the sharpest tool.

Let's put the facts out there. I was not doing well.

I just lost my girl.

I was getting bored of my life. I was getting bored of my job.

Shit!

I was fixing sprinklers.

I just didn't care anymore.

Just sick of everything, sick of life in itself.

Ended up driving south on 675, in my 2002 Econoline.

I didn't know what to do with myself. I'd never been alone before.

What do you do with that kind of freedom?

Eric, you know, he felt like he never had enough.

It became a search for fulfillment.

I'm trying to do something different. I'm trying to find myself again.

Seeing the turn in... I was like, "Never been there before."

I turned in, drove down here to the boat ramp.

There's a dumpster down there.

Hell, yeah.

So I started throwing my garbage into the dumpster.

And I seen garbage laying around the dumpster.

I seen it lined up along the fence line.

Like, this is where people hang out.

Like, why would you want this kind of stuff there?

So I started picking that up. I was on a mission

to try to help clean up the world.

We were down here on a Sunday, throwing horseshoes.

Saw a strange fellow just kind of walking around,

picking up little bits of trash,

and putting them in little piles everywhere.

I was trying to make piles of garbage throughout the woods,

'cause it's all through back there, it's garbage, man.

And I noticed there was this fence.

Something was strange about this fence.

That fence...

represented a border that I wanted to break.

The real freedom was out there, man.

That's where your freedom is. That's your freaking America, out there.

That's why I went over that fence, to go find a new me.

That fence was me crossing the line.

Boy, am I good at crossing the line.

It's kind of what I do.

It's definitely a huge part of what I do.

He kind of meandered off

and walked over to the woods over there, and...

he crawled over the fence,

crawled under the fence, and then crawled back over the fence.

And then off in the woods he went, and we never saw him again.

The swamp feels like it just kept calling me.

I wanted to make the swamp my bitch.

I said, "Fuck it." Kept going deeper back into the woods.

And I tried to barrel my way through it like a bull.

Shit.

And then keep going. Go underneath, climb on, go around.

I get probably halfway through that brush.

I have no clue where I am. Cut from head to toe.

Been out here a couple of hours already.

Do I go back? Do I go forward? I didn't really know, man.

So I moved forward.

Nighttime comes.

And now, I come across this lake.

I'm cut from head to toe, and I'm just thinking...

"The water looks inviting."

I'm a Florida Man, I can swim.

And I've got my boots in my hand, heavy, wet.

I'm trying to swim with them in one arm.

So now, I'm stuck in the middle of it.

And the boots are drowning me.

So these boots go to the bottom of the lake, along with the pants.

I'm swimming forward, I'm swimming backwards.

I went underwater a couple of times, man. I... I dove down to see how deep it was.

This is the first time I realized there might be alligators in the lake,

which is pretty stupid for a Florida Man.

And it should have been the first thing I thought about.

There's a lot of gators out there at Lake Manatee.

Sometimes when you go out there around dusk,

if it's warm, you can see 20 heads sticking out of the water out there.

- Can I take a picture of y'all? - Oh, yeah, sure.

Cool.

My name is Justin Matthews.

I'm the founder of Matthews Wildlife Rescue.

I'm from Bradenton, Florida.

I've lived here all my life. I've only been out of the state once.

And you need to know if you live in Florida,

when you're looking at any wild animal, you don't want to interact with them.

So, I was swimming on my back, looking up at the stars,

just as if I was at the beach, man.

I look over, sure enough.

The alligator's, like, a foot and a half, maybe two feet away from me.

I'm looking dead in this thing's eye.

Man, that camera's further away from me than that alligator was.

And I went to freestyle swim.

Before my right arm even touched the water down,

that alligator had a hold of my forearm.

He's got my forearm in his grip,

and I got my arm over his ribs, trying to pull.

I don't want this thing to roll on me.

That's how gators kill their prey. They do a death roll on the bottom.

We can roll, but we ain't gonna do the death part.

Well, the gator, when he grabbed his arm, I'm sure you heard a crunch.

My arm bent backwards.

I just kick as hard as I possibly can. Push this thing up out the water.

He takes me down, I push it out again.

He takes me back down, I push it out again.

And then he just ripped it off.

And the gator took off, wagging his tail, big old bone in his mouth,

and a smile on his face, just like a little chihuahua.

You want me to get my gator?

Yeah, he's warning me.

Come on.

Come on.

She just peed on me.

This is Miranda. She's an alligator. I've only had her for about a week,

and she's bonding with me really good.

You doing okay? You gonna rip my nose off?

No? Okay.

If you got your arm bit off by an alligator,

you're probably gonna bleed to death.

I mean, adrenaline is...

It's an amazing thing. It makes you do superhuman things.

At this point, I assume I'm bleeding all over the place.

I have no clue how I'm not already dead.

Finally found some solid land, trying to sleep, sleeping on and off.

I'm getting eaten up by ants, one arm, butt naked.

Probably in shock. Waiting for the grasses to start parting,

'cause this alligator's stalking me like it's a lion or something, right?

Hey, Eric.

Mom?

God sent me here, Eric.

Hey, Mom!

I do believe, spiritually, my mother came down,

and took my arm to save my life.

She seen me on the wrong road and she had to do it.

I took your arm to save your life, because you're on a really bad path.

Thank you, Mom.

At the end of the day, my arm had to be taken to save my life.

And who better to do it than my own mother?

Somebody's got a lot of energy in here.

Who is that?

Who do you think it is? Is there a way to tell?

You...

have a high energy content.

My name is Elissa Benson.

I'm a hypnotherapist, and I specialize in past life regression.

The reason that we are born and come to Earth

is to try and raise our vibration with each lifetime.

I've had a lifetime in Atlantis. I've had a lifetime in Egypt.

Every part of history that you can imagine, I have seen.

Let me ask. May I ask for somebody else?

So, that's a yes. Okay, stop.

May I ask for Eric?

These are my guides answering me through this.

Stop.

Is Eric's belief that the alligator was his mother true?

No, was his fantasy, which is what I suspected.

- You think? - Didn't want to say.

No, because it's not for me to say...

- Yeah. - That you're having a fantasy.

- Oh, yeah. - Okay.

We can feel things that aren't true.

How many of us have believed things that aren't true?

"He really loves me." Yeah, right!

I do not believe that a human's soul or their body or...

or any way can go when you die, I don't believe you're...

go inside an animal, and then you're that animal.

I don't believe that at all.

My aunts, uncles, and friends, they like to argue with me,

and say, "It was not your mom, this was a terrible tragedy,"

and all of that, and I respect that opinion, and I agree.

It... it is a terrible thing. "Tragedy"? I don't know about that, man.

We may never know what happened out there.

Sometimes I don't want to know what happened out there.

I do know one thing, is he fought, every day, 'cause he wanted to live.

Been missing my arm, going on towards a day now.

Nothing to eat.

I'm done. It's not fun no more. That's it, the fun part's over.

Hello? Thought I heard something.

I'm trying to walk through the swamp. Things sticking and poking me.

Paranoid out of my freaking mind of this damn gator, man.

Alligator, where are you?

Finally came out of there into an orange grove,

where I tried to eat one of the green oranges.

I thought about taking honey from some man-made beehives,

'cause I'm, like, starved and I'm thirsty as heck.

I found, I believe, three separate ATVs.

I was trying to hotwire them to find a way out of there.

And I climbed a tree with one arm!

And I'm waving at helicopters and airplanes,

and screaming at the top of my lungs.

I was ready to give up, you know,

I'm legitimately looking for vultures at this point.

Oh fuck, it's circling me.

I suspect that the bleeding, just because the way his arm was mangled,

it probably crushed him enough to where it slowed down.

I mean, I don't see how you could live for two and a half days

not going into shock with your arm bit off,

lost in the woods. It's a miracle they found him.

I don't know how he's still alive. He's lucky to be alive.

He's lucky they didn't drag him down and drowned him.

You know, then they would have finished off the next day.

What's crazy is how vividly I remember all this stuff, you know?

That sure looks like it might be the cut fence.

That's the kind of water I was dipping my hand in and trying to drink.

I mean, could you imagine for three days laying there,

with no arm, no medical care, taking your hand and just sipping water?

Sometimes in straight mud...

trying to filter it through...

and then just drinking it?

I mean, how bad do you want to live?

I probably only moved a hundred yards that third day, I bet you.

Didn't move barely any. "I'm dead, man. I'm dead."

With a giant open wound?

"Fuck it, I'm gonna lay here and die."

Hey, Eric. Hey, Eric.

Wait...

There's a beer bottle on the ground.

Where did that come from?

Dude, I can't be far from that fence.

Somebody threw that beer bottle over the fence.

I seen civilization once again. I knew I was making it out.

I knew I was right there. There's no way I'm giving up.

I can't have but 50 feet to go.

That beer bottle was hope, man.

"Let's get the fuck out of this swamp, man."

Hey! Hey!

- I was leaving this parking lot... - Hey!

- Driving up this way... - Hey!

And I got up right to about this location,

- and I heard somebody scream... - Hey!

"Help, help, help!"

Hi, I'm Rick, and I was the one that found Eric,

with the... with his arm taken off from an alligator.

He was totally naked. He had swamp muck all over him.

And I said, "Bro, an alligator got my arm!"

He said, "Holy shit!"

I yelled, "Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit."

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!

I said, "You got any water, man?"

You got any water, man?

Only thing I asked him,

"No, don't call the ambulance. Don't call nobody."

"Give me some damn water."

He calls the ambulance. I lay on the ground, man.

I know my journey's over. I know what I just accomplished. I get it.

I'm like, "Holy fuck!"

I apologize for the language, but holy fuck me twice!

That was the freakiest thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

I hope I never see anything again like this.

I didn't sleep for a few nights after this. It was pretty traumatic.

Yeah, standing here, looking in the woods, I could still see Eric.

I could see his blue eyes.

I could see him naked. Unfortunately.

It's all I wanted, man.

- And then you came through. - I don't know how you survived,

'cause the heat was brutal those days.

Man, I had it made in the shade. Look at all those trees.

- Wow. But it was hot. - I went swimming when I wanted to.

I mean, man, I was just living the tropical dream.

Yeah.

Whatever you wanna call it.

Yeah, I mean, it was a tropical nightmare, brother.

- Yeah. - No, man, I'm so...

- Thank you. - Hey.

- Thank you, seriously. - You're welcome.

I'm part of this swamp. The swamp's part of me now.

My arm's never leaving here. It's been eaten up. It's been shit out.

And it's in this lake somewhere. It's in those woods somewhere.

Circle of life, man. I mean, it's... I...

I'm part of this swamp now, and the swamp lives within me.

I know it's gonna sound crazy, man, but I want to go again.

I wanna go again. I know that's crazy.

I know that's absolutely fucking insane.

I am so ready to run back there right now,

and just go get it one more time, man.

I don't know.

I don't know, man. It's something that's just, like, calling me, man.

You know, like, I got the call of the wild in me, man.

Forty-three-year-old Eric Merda says he was reborn on July 17th

after losing his right arm in an alligator attack.

He says he now has a new calling in life.

- I'm in the swamp. The swamp is in me. - Swamp is in me.

- I'm in the swamp. - I'm in the swamp.

- The swamp is in me. - The swamp is in me.

I'd like to be a motivational speaker

just because I probably dug myself out of more crap

than most people will ever even dream of being in.

He has been, in a weird way, a spiritual guy.

It did enlighten him to the little things in life that he still had.

And he doesn't have much.

He doesn't have much money to his name, but he became happy.

He bounced off that and became, you know, this different Eric, this new Eric.

If a piece of shit like me can come out of something like that, I know you can.

'Cause ain't nobody a bigger piece of shit than I am.

I've been here since 1980.

I love it here because I like the heat.

If anybody wants

a past life aggression... regression,

I will give you a half-price deal.

I'm normally 250, and I'll do it for 175.