The Sunday Mail
Stranger than Fiction
Enduring hippo jaws
After serving in the British army for years and travelling the globe in pursuit of adventure and excitement, Paul Templer decided to make his native Zimbabwe his permanent home, where he became a river guide. However, on one fateful day, when he was out on a routine tour guiding a group of tourists down the Zambezi River, Templer experienced a sudden attack from a bull hippopotamus — one of Africa’s deadliest animals. Although the hippo was unable to capsize the canoes, it however tossed one of the guides into the choppy waters. Templer dived in quickly to save his workmate, but the enormous hippo suddenly leapt up between them, swallowing Templer’s head while at the same time pinning his arms at his side with its razor-sharp teeth. The hippo swam off with him, and all that a confused Templer could think was, “Wow! It is dark in here.”
His painful ordeal was just about to begin.The hippo teared open his foot, severed his arm, cracked his ribs and ripped gaping holes in both his back and chest.
He somehow survived.
After a lengthy seven-hour operation, which involved amputating the severed arm, Templer began his long recovery.
However, this incident did not deter him from doing what he loves.
Templer continued with his safari tours.
He later became a coach, public speaker and main fund-raiser for the children’s charity “Make-a-Difference”.
The Jumbo Full Monty
As an internationally acclaimed explorer who once spent 455 days trekking through East Africa, Michael Fay had become somewhat used to being charged at by elephants. However, in 2003 he and his companions were attacked by a female elephant protecting her young in the Loango National Park in Gabon, resulting in Fay being gored by her massive tusks.
Fay survived the attack and had this to say regarding the incident: “You mess with elephants all the time and you get close to them, eventually one of them is going to go for the full monty. I just thank God that I had time to turn around, grab those tusks and ride that bronco as long as I could.”
Hippo pounce on ex-model
Winner of Miss South Africa 1991 and a former finalist in the Miss World competition, Diana Tilden-Davis was canoe-paddling through the Okavango Delta in Botswana when she was attacked by a hippo that came close to chomping her leg off.
Her husband, who assisted Tilden-Davis with operating a safari company in the region, said hippos were showing aggressive behaviour at that time due to the region being hit by an extreme drought, meaning food was hard to come by.
Tilden-Davis narrowly managed to escape with her life, but still had to use crutches for up to two years after the incident.
Chimps dangerous bite
Andrew Oberle was studying the behaviour of chimps at the Goodall Institute in South Africa when he bypassed two safety fences in order to get close enough to the chimps themselves, prompting them to attack. Though it was through fault of his own, Oberle was left fighting for his life after having been bitten and dragged for almost a kilometre.
His parents requested that the hospital not divulge the extent of their son’s injuries but it later leaked that Oberle lost his fingers and toes, and his arms were exposed to the bone.
Battling a leopard’s clutch
Zimbabwean Wayne Williamson was contract-hunting in north-west Mozambique, near Lake Cahora Bassa, when he suffered a leopard attack. The night previous to the attack, a French professional hunter and his client had injured a leopard that Williamson then went to follow up on.
The attack happened swiftly.
The leopard quickly approached a crouched Williamson and hooked him on the right side of his head, pulling his head into its mouth.
Williamson managed to get his hand and arm inside of its mouth to pull away, and somehow was able to throw the leopard off of himself, after which it was shot by the French hunter.
Williamson wrapped up his own head and organised for the other to fetch a vehicle whilst he began walking back on his own. He was eventually picked up, driven back to camp, put onto a boat and flown to Bulawayo for treatment.
The incident caused Williamson to sustain serious lacerations to his scalp, left hand, and arm, but he later recovered. – africanoverlandtours.com.
