‘He had green eyes’: Florida man will paint alligator which attacked him

In several decades as a professional artist, painting Florida’s marine life, Mark Johnson has developed a pretty good eye for detail. Now the outdoorsman whose website offers “realistic portrayals created primarily from memory and imagination” is about to start work on a gritty new work: an alligator with rows of perfect white teeth, clamped on the thigh of a man out walking his dog.

It will be a self-portrait. On a morning stroll with his golden retriever Rex along a canal near his home in Port St Lucie, Johnson was attacked by an 8ft 6in alligator that lunged from the water, raced towards him and chomped down on his leg, causing a deep wound that required 60 stitches.

He started clamping down really good above my knee, and my shoe was sticking out the base of his jaw

Mark Johnson

Johnson said he freed himself by jabbing his index fingers into the eyes of the giant reptile, which released its grip and sank back into the canal.

“I’ve already got the canvas ordered to paint it,” Johnson, 61, said in an interview with the community website patch.com.

“This image will be on my mind the rest of my life. I can see it right now, I see my foot, I see the gator, I see the position. He had green eyes. The teeth were pearly white, no stain or anything.

“He knew he had his prey. He wanted to roll so he could start dismembering. He started clamping down really good above my knee, and my shoe was sticking out the base of his jaw.”

After Johnson freed himself, he said, he limped home with blood dripping from puncture wounds on his leg, to be reunited with Rex, who had followed an order to run off when the alligator attacked.

Johnson’s wife drove him to hospital, where doctors stitched his thigh and a finger injured when he jabbed the creature’s eye.

“It’s important for people to understand how dangerous alligators are,” Johnson told tcpalm.com. “If I had been a small child or a pet, I wouldn’t have had a chance.”

Rangers from the Florida fish and wildlife commission trapped and removed the alligator. According to state records, there have been 283 major alligator attacks on humans in Florida since records began in 1948. Twenty-five were fatal.