FAT TEEN FIGHTS OFF GATOR WITH HER BARE HANDS!
By Ginger Fox

A TUBBY teenager fought off a 550-pound alligator with her bare hands
when the hungry reptile crept up out of the water and tried to steal
the picnicking fatty's hamburger and fries!

"Nobody steals my vittles," 235- lb. Bernice Crane, 17, fumed after
cops pulled her away from the beast and then shot the 15- foot reptile
dead.

"I might have given him a fry and my pickles if he had stayed in the
water. But he wanted everything. Too bad for him."

The mind-twisting drama unfolded in a small Belle Glade, Fla. park
adjoining the Sunshine State's famed "river of grass" -- the
gatorinfested Everglades.

The blubbery beauty and several members of her so-called "Grub Club"
were enjoying one of their weekly cookouts when she laid a paper plate
with her food on it on the ground while she retrieved a medicine ball
that a fat friend tossed in her direction.

"After I picked up the ball and turned back around I could see the
gator out of the corner of my eye," recalls the spunky girl.

"He was about 20 feet to the west of my plate, and I was about 20 feet
to the north. I remember thinking, 'You green bastard -- don't you even
THINK about eating my burger.'

"But what did he do? He went for it anyway. I knew right then that I
was gonna have to kill him."

And try to kill him she did.

While her terrified pals ran screaming in the opposite direction, she
went straight for the gator -- and attacked!

"I was stunned," says Billy Feimster, 19, who watched the spectacle
from the safety of his pickup truck.

"At first Bernice straddled his back and then she sat on him and yanked
back his head and snout.

"I thought she was going to break his neck, but he started whipping his
tail around and bucking and she fell off."

The startled gator tried to dart back into the water "but Bernice
caught him," Feimster continues.

"She started gouging her fingers in his eyes and screaming at him.
"Thank goodness somebody had a cell phone and called the cops."

In their official report, patrolmen Kent Masters and Marilee Sears said
they "pulled Miss Crane away from the alligator and then shot it
multiple times in the head" with their 9 mm semiautomatic semiautomatic
pistols, killing the creature instantly."

The teenager "was cussing a blue streak and kicking at the alligator's
body. She was hysterical," the cops continued. "She told it to 'get
your own hamburger.'

"She finally calmed down when we advised her that the alligator was
dead. Then she returned to her hamburger and ate it.

"She doesn't seem to realize she's lucky the gator didn't eat her."

Published on: 06/10/2005