jackassworld

Whenever you put a major metropolitan city next to an unmitigated wilderness rife with wildlife beyond measure, you have to plan for a certain amount of acceptable loss in terms of human life. So when the city of Miami, Florida, was incorporated on July 28th, 1896, they had to know their “OG” reptilian neighbors might step up every so often to remind everyone whose block this was in the first damn place. Accordingly, no less than 20 fatal alligator attacks have since been logged in the historical record books. Some chalk this statistic up to man’s general overconfidence around the seemingly inert reptilian logs, but that’s a relative statement at best. To be sure, some people—okay, a lot of people, are just plain stupid dumb with amazingly Darwin-like powers of ignorance. But then you’re presented with someone like Manny Puig, who is, no doubt, a few stories short of a Miami high-rise, but he also fully respects the power of the animals he gets up close and personal with. Take the alligators, for instance, that he confronts on their aqueous home turf in the “Black Swamp.” This is an undeniably crazy thing to do, but what’s most crazy is that his deadpan confidence is so infectious and persuasive he’s able to get Chris Pontius and Jeff Tremaine to accompany him on a leisurely afternoon swim through this alligator-infested canal, too. And if that’s not wacko enough, he then takes them back into it at night. Fucking gnarly.