10-year-old, Juliana Ossa, is lucky to be alive after having a close encounter with an alligator that attacked her in Orlando, just about 26 miles from Disney World, on Saturday, May 6th.

She was swimming in the water, when an eight foot, nine-inch long gator grabbed hold of her leg. She tried hitting it to get the gator to release her leg, but it didn’t work. Luckily, the girl had another idea and knew how to respond. She claims to have poked the alligator in the eye with her nails, and also punched the gator in the nose but also had put her fingers in its nostrils to pry the alligator’s mouth open.

The young girl claims to have just recently taken a trip to Gatorland where they teach people what to do if they ever did have an alligator attack them.

“I used what they taught me at Gatorland, so I put my two fingers up its nostrils and it couldn’t breath and had to breath from its mouth and then let my leg out,” she said. “The gator didn’t do anything because he was too busy biting my leg and too busy with his claws in the sand. He didn’t have any attack moves to take out my fingers.”

The parents of the girl said they are extremely happy that their daughter got out of that situation with as little damage as she had. The girl got stitches in her leg and is going to recover and have the same childhood as any other child would.