FORT MYERS, Fla. — A southwest Florida man who lost his arm in an alligator attack last weekend is grateful to be alive.
"I didn't lose my life," Jordan Rivera told NBC affiliate WBBH from his hospital bed in Fort Myers. "I lost an arm. It's not the end of the world."
An alligator attacked Rivera early Sunday, biting off his right arm.
"They got my elbow," he said. "So, I don't have an elbow."
Rivera said he doesn't remember much about the incident, but he remembers that the line to the bathroom at Banditos in Port Charlotte was long, so he walked to the pond out back.
"Something happened where I either tripped or the ground below me just kind of went down, and I ended up in the water," Rivera said. "And that's literally the last thing I remember."
When he woke up, he was in a hospital. That's when he found out the gator ate his arm.
"It kind of just feels like my arm is just there but not there," he said.
People at the bar rushed to help Rivera, pulling him from the water and putting a tourniquet on his arm to stop the bleeding.
"I call them angels that were there that saved his life," Rivera's mother, Teresa Lessa, said. "The chances of someone being there with a tourniquet, to me, it's a miracle that he's here."
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Rivera denies online chatter that he was feeding the gator.
"That is completely not true," he said, pointing out that the bar doesn't even serve food.
Instead of spreading lies, Rivera has a message for others about Florida's prehistoric predators.
"I would just show them my arm and be like, 'Hey, bud,'" he said.
It took trappers hours to wrangle the 10-foot-long alligator that attacked Rivera. The gator was killed.
Rivera still must undergo another surgery to clean out the remaining bacteria from his arm.
