GOLDEN GATE ESTATES, Fla. - It doesn't bother a group of Golden Gate Estate residents to swim just feet from where a teen lost his hand to a gator Sunday night.

"He was out here swimming after dark, you don't swim after dark," Chris Kight says.

Steven Hutton, a child with Kight's group explains why, "because it's feeding time and the alligators start coming out."

Reports say 18-year-old Tim Delano was swimming at 9 p.m. in a canal known at The Crystal off 42nd Avenue SE. A 10 foot alligator got him by the hand when he was trying to pull himself onto a rock. Delano's hand was recovered from the gator's belly, but doctors were not able to reattach it.

The families we found swimming in The Crystal Monday afternoon say that's the chance you take in any Florida canal. They tell WINK News the whole event doesn't phase them at all.

"That, what happened last night, was a freak accident," Kight believes.

Kight and his family have been using The Crystal as their swimming hole for the last 20 years, but if Delano and his mother get their way, that may not happen anymore. They think it should be shut down to swimmers.

"It's not our fault. Don't take our last swimming hole away from us," Danielle Hutton exclaims.

Florida Fish and Wildlife haven't received any other complaints about alligators in The Crystal, however, they say most are aware it's perfect gator habitat. If there are any plans to close it to swimmers, they say it will not be up to them, possibly up to the county.