Swallowed by hippo: A river guide in southern Africa said he was swallowed by a hippo--an experience that nearly killed him.
“The hippo who tried to kill me wasn’t a stranger – he and I had met before a number of times. I was 27 and owned a business taking clients down the Zambezi river near Victoria Falls,” Paul Templer wrote in The Guardian. “I‘d been working this stretch of river for years, and the grouchy old two-ton bull had carried out the occasional half-hearted attack. I’d learned to avoid him. Hippos are territorial and I knew where he was most likely to be at any given time.”
The hippo attack took place on the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe around 17 years ago when Templer was 27.
“There was no transition at all, no sense of approaching danger,” he wrote of the attack. “It was as if I had suddenly gone blind and deaf.”
Templer was ultimately able to crawl his way out of the hippo’s mouth before he was caught again.
Hippos, which are extremely territorial, kill more people in Africa than any other animals, according to the Discovery Channel. The animals can weigh as much as four tons.
“I remember looking up through 10 feet of water at the green and yellow light playing on the surface, and wondering which of us could hold his breath the longest,” he recalled. “Blood rose from my body in clouds, and a sense of resignation overwhelmed me. I’ve no idea how long we stayed under -- time passes very slowly when you’re in a hippo’s mouth.”
One of the apprentice tour guides he was with was killed in the incident. Templer ended up losing his arm.
Ultimately, the hippo spit Templer out and he was rescued before he was taken to a medical facility.
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