A Florida man fights the alligator to free his cub

(CNN) – In a dramatic encounter recorded by surveillance cameras, a Florida man chased an alligator underwater and saved his 3-month-old pup from the jaws of death.

Richard Wilbanks, 74, of Estero, Florida, ran into his back pond, fought the lizard on the surface and opened his jaws to free Gunner, his Cavalier King Charles spaniel.

“We were crossing the pond,” Wilbanks told CNN, “and it came out of the water like a missile. I never thought an alligator could be that fast. It was that fast.”

He said the adrenaline or instinct kicked in and “I automatically jumped into the water”.

Holding the crocodile wasn’t that difficult, but opening its jaws was “extremely difficult,” he said.

Wilbanks said his hands were “bitten” and he went to a doctor for a tetanus shot.

Gunner had a puncture wound in his abdomen and did well after a trip to the vet.

The rescue south of Fort Myers was caught on camera thanks to a partnership between the Florida Federation of Wildlife and the fSTOP Foundation.

“We live in a shared landscape,” Meredith Budd of the Wildlife Federation told WINK affiliate. “We don’t just want to tolerate wildlife, we want to thrive with wildlife in a shared landscape.”

Wilbanks agrees with that mission and doesn’t want the alligator to be pulled out of the pond or euthanized.

“They are part of nature and part of our life,” he said.

He still takes Gunner for a walk, but keeps the pup on a leash and 10 feet from the edge of the pond. “Our pets are like family to us,” she said.