BATON ROUGE, La. -- Local doctors were able to save the arm of an LSU graduate student from Baton Rouge after a rare attack by an alligator.
It happened July 28 at Jean Lafitte National Park on the West Bank.
Park Rangers say because people feed wild alligators, some can no longer distinguish between the food in hand and the hand that feeds them.
An LSU science student was doing research for her Ph.D. in the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park in Jefferson Parish. She's studying how bald cypress trees can better survive the stress of salt water. And that's when the accident happened.
The researcher, Yu-Hsin Hsueh, 29, was on the boardwalk and she stooped to lean over and get a sample of soil and water. That's when the alligator that was hiding underneath the boardwalk came out and grabbed her arm, breaking several bones. It went into its death roll pulling her and thrashing, but then Hsueh was able to get away.
The rangers can only speculate that she got away because the alligator opened its mouth to re-grip her arm. Rangers say there would have been no way Hsueh could have pulled away on her own because the jaw of the alligator is very powerful.
"It was so scary. I can not imagine if I lose my hand at that time. I scream all the time," Hsueh said of the attack, which lasted about 10 seconds.
Hsueh barely weighs more than 100 pounds. The female alligator was 7 feet long and between 200 and 300 pounds. There are almost no documented cases of wild alligators attacking a human and none in the 30 years that the 23,000 acres of Jean Lafitte has been managed. The rangers say it's from people feeding the gators, which is dangerous and illegal.
"Once an alligator comes to associate a person with food, then instead of running away from a person that's walking down the boardwalk, or instead of submerging as they often do, they'll actually move toward what they believe is a source of food," explained David Muth, the Jean Lafitte National Park chief of resources.
Rangers have tried in the past to retrain alligators to naturally ignore humans again. It doesn't work. Relocating them doesn't either, they just return. So the alligator was euthanized.
Hsueh has a long road ahead of her with healing, physical therapy and more surgery, possibly to replace a crushed finger joint and repair tendons. The metal pins sticking out of her hand and arm come out in six to eight weeks, but the internal metal plates stay for life.
Hsueh's orthopedic and hand surgeon is Tulane's Dr. Kathleen A. Robertson. She performed surgery about 10 days ago.
"Outcome for her is going to depend. She's young and she doesn't appear to be infected. So she should heal bones. If she gets infected then we have a problem to stop and start over to cure the infection," Robertson said.
Hsueh's parents back home in Taiwan have not seen her since the attack.
"They cried. I actually didn't tell them the truth in the first place. I tell them, like, bicycle acciden,t but then I could not make lies because they keep asking more questions," she said.
And doctors say Hsueh has still never complained of pain.
Research is temporarily suspended in the park so rangers can determine that each scientist's methods are safe. And there are signs there reminding visitors about proper safety with wild animals.
Hsueh only has limited student health insurance. Friends and fellow students and professors have set up a bank account to help her pay for all of her medical bills. You can donate at any Home Bank. Here's a list of locations.
