Nine-year-old boy fights off 400-pound alligator (VIDEO)

A nine-year-old boy may be one of the strongest boys around. James Barney Junior was swimming in a lake near Orlando last week, when a 400-pound alligator attacked the boy.

He had been riding his bike with friends when he decided to take a dip in a dangerous lake near Orlando.

"First I thought someone was just playing with me and I didn't know what happened. I reached down to go grab it and I felt its jaw, I felt its teeth," Barney said.

"I reached down to go grab it, and I felt its jaw, I felt its teeth. And I didn't know what to do. So I immediately reacted and hit it a couple of times. Finally, I had enough strength left to pry its jaw open a little," he told reporters.

Barney escaped with only minor alligator bites and a memorable souvenir, the animal's tooth. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Barney suffered "three superficial bites, mostly on his buttocks, and about 30 teeth marks and claw scratches on his back, stomach and legs."

In a Facebook update Saturday, Barney's dad said that the boy, who was hospitalized following the attack, is "doing well."

"Today I was told to count my blessings material and non-material," James Barney Sr. wrote on Facebook following the gator attack on his son. "Little did I know that I [could've] lost one of them very easily."