He Turned, Saw Friend's Head in Gator's Mouth

"I'm genuinely just really, really lucky" is not a quote you'd expect from a woman who had an alligator bite her face. But that's what 20-year-old Marissa Carr is saying after encountering a 9-foot male alligator while snorkeling in a clear, spring-fed pond. The Florida woman tells WOFL that she surfaced at Ocala National Forest's Alexander Springs on Sunday to see "two little eyes sticking out of the water." It was a barely concealed alligator, who lunged at her face, biting her forehead, per the Miami Herald.

"Sounds bad, but it biting my head is probably the best place that it could have been," Carr tells WOFL, noting the alligator wasn't able get a good grip on the bony structure of her forehead. "It would have got a better grip on my arm and I could have lost my arm," she says. Carr's friend, Shane, who was snorkeling alongside her, tells WOFL that he "heard a rush of water and I turned around to make sure [Carr] was OK." She was not. "I just saw the gator" and "I saw her head in its mouth," he says. A bystander snapped photos of Carr still in the pond, blood covering her forehead, as an alligator swims some distance behind her, per WOFL.

Carr, showing off two cuts to her forehead, says she felt pain only after freeing herself from the pond. It's unclear what became of the reptile, which was removed by a trapper who would've been able to claim ownership, per the Herald. While nuisance alligators can be sold alive to a farm or zoo, they can also be harvested for meat, the outlet reports. Alexander Springs had been closed days before Carr's encounter after a man bumped into an alligator while snorkeling. He wasn't bitten but suffered what the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission called a non-life-threatening injury; it didn't elaborate. (More alligator stories.)