A South Florida man has a long road to recovery after he was bit in the leg by a crocodile at Everglades National Park over the weekend.
'I am feeling good because I am alive," Rodrigo Constain told NBC6 from his home Tuesday after coming home from the hospital. "It's a story that probably couldn't be told."
Constain went out to sail his boat Sunday at the Flamingo Marina when the wind knocked his boat over and he fell into the water.
When he tried to get back inside the boat, he felt something hold onto his leg.
"I didn't feel any pain, nothing," he recalled. "I don't know why."
Constain said his intuition was to touch whatever was holding onto his leg — he then felt a long mouth and a head and tried to loosen the creature's grip.
"I didn't know what was holding me because I didn't enter in panic," he said. "I didn't know ... never I thought that it was a crocodile."
U.S. & World
The crocodile let go. Constain finally felt the pain hit as he swam back to the deck. The crocodile had bit his left leg, above his ankle.
"I wasn't panicking and I didn't at all. I wasn't afraid, I didn't feel any panic," he said.
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Rangers responded to the marina and found the 68-year-old with lacerations on his leg. Constain said his wife and his rangers saw the crocodile in the water from the deck.
Constain was airlifted to Jackson South Hospital. He said doctors told him the wound went as deep as the bone, but it was a miracle that there was no fracture.
He now has a long road to recovery. Doctors said it would take about a month for him to walk again.
"I don't know how I'm gonna work since I'm a handyman," Constain said.
His family established a GoFundMe for help with hospital bills. He said he's thankful for the help he's received so far.
"There's only one reason that I'm here: It's God," Constain said. "If you're not with God, I wouldn't be here. He was all the time with me and that's what I think. I was not afraid, because when you believe in God, you are not afraid."
