All language subtitles for Its.Florida.Man.S01E02.1080p.WEB.H264-SuccessfulCrab1

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.