A newlywed man was left with his intestines hanging out of his body in a grisly hippo attack.
Samuel McKee is one of the few people who have survived a close encounter with a hippopotamus, one of the deadliest animals in the world.
His honeymoon in Botswana with his high school sweetheart Anna McKee became a fight for survival when a hippo latched onto Samuel and pulled him into the water.
The couple, from Washington state, had travelled to explore the Okavango Delta, an inland river area teeming with African wildlife.
A guide was navigating them in a dugout canoe through the river when the attack unfolded, with Samuel rescued thanks to his wife’s actions.
The guide had pointed at a mother hippo with two calves in the distance, saying that the animal’s open mouth was a sign of aggression and that they would avoid the spot.
But suddenly the huge animal charged at the boat.
Samuel, 31, told Newsweek: ‘Then the hippo hit. It grabbed me around the torso and pinned me to the bottom of the swamp. I wasn’t really feeling pain yet. What I remember most was the force. It was more force than I’d ever experienced in my life.
‘For a moment I felt its grip loosen, then it clamped down again lower on my body. A few seconds later it was gone.’
In a split-second decision, Anna, who had also been thrown out of the canoe and into the croc-infested swamp, punched the hippo and it let go.
Once he was out of the water, he said he felt a pain in his back and realised ‘my intestines were hanging out.’
Back at the boats, the agonising wait for help began as the group were in the wilderness, initially with no cell connection.
Samuel, an avid skateboarder, said on Instagram: ‘She helped me walk out of the swamp while I carried my intestines in one hand.
‘Then I laid in a tent in the bush with no pain relief for 13 hours while doctors on the phone with my wife repeatedly told us I was going to die if I didn’t get to a hospital immediately, which wasn’t an option due to closed air space.’
Family in the US were alerted for a chance to say goodbye once they reached phone connection.
But Samuel said he was feeling ‘pissed off, I wanted to do a lot more things, I just got married.’
Eventually, a helicopter was able to transport him to South Africa for emergency laparotomy surgery before a long road to recovery.
The 31-year-old said that his ‘tiny wife charged the hippo and saved my life.’
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