Alligator Mauls Mississippi Trapper Who Lived to Tell About It

An alligator mauled Mississippi trapper Craig Breland, who knows all about gators, and he lived to tell about it while recovering from surgery.

It happened in June in Hancock County, near Bay St. Louis, after police responded to a report about an alligator that had been struck and injured by a vehicle on Mississippi 603, according to The Clarion Ledger.

Breland is a licensed alligator-trapping agent and he was called to the scene.

He was attempting to secure the alligator when he slipped and fell. The injured and defensive gator attacked Breland and, before managing to escape, the trapper sustained serious injuries and had to later undergo surgery.

State wildlife officials didn't consider it an attack.

"An attack is unprovoked," Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks alligator program co-ordinator Ricky Flynt told the Ledger. "This was provoked. The alligator was acting in a natural defense."

In a separate recent incident, captured on video, another Mississippi man was attacked while he was helping to get a 10-foot alligator off Mississippi 603, reported the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

He was taken to hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries.

(Mississippi 603 runs through the state's southern-most county and sounds like a local version of Florida's Alligator Alley.)

If Mississippians think they're seeing more alligators lately, they're right.

In 1967, American alligators were earmarked as an endangered species and the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks has since been working to re-establish the native species into suitable habitats across the state.

Flynt explained that, from 1970 to 1978, an estimated 4,000 alligators were captured at Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana and transported to Mississippi for release.

Those efforts soon saw the population rebound.

"A statewide survey of conservation officers in 1977 indicated that alligators occurred in 55 of 82 counties," said Flynt. "A similar study in 2006 reported an increase to 77 of 82 counties."

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