A BRIT tourist has told how he miraculously survived being mauled by a hippo.
Roland Cherry, 63, was on a river trip with wife Shirley in Zambia when the 1.5-ton beast flipped over their canoe.
4
4
It dragged the marketing director into the water and locked its powerful jaws on him. The hippo then tossed him up like “a rag doll” — but, fortunately, towards the riverbank.
Roland was airlifted to hospital with horrendous injuries, including a ten-inch gash to his abdomen.
Medics told him he was lucky to be alive, as hippos in Africa kill an estimated 500 people a year.
The dad of two, from Warwickshire, needed seven ops in a fortnight.
READ MORE ON HIPPO ATTACKS
He recalled: “When the hippo first hit the canoe, there was a massive crash, much like a car crash really. The canoe reared up in the air, tossing us into the water.
“I remember surfacing, realising my shoulder was quite badly injured and I realised I’d dislocated it from the outset and the consequences were that I couldn’t actually swim.
“I was really a sitting duck, trying to swim with one arm which was never going to end well — and then it grabbed me.”
He was dragged to the bottom of the Kafue River, and feared he would die.
Roland went on: “I remember thinking, ‘Oh no, what a way to go . . . I’m not ready to die’, and I thought ‘This was it, as nobody survives hippo attacks’.”
The animal then dropped him in shallow water on the bank before attacking him again.
He said: “We know subsequently from fellow travellers I was grabbed again and thrown through the air like a rag doll but towards the bank, which was the godsend.
“I remember looking down at my legs thinking, ‘That’s not good’. There was bits of flesh sticking out of my torn shorts and blood over my abdomen.”
Roland told The Sun that his first words after the terrifying ordeal were: “Oh gosh — that smarts a bit.”
A rescue team put him on a motor boat and rushed him back to camp. He suffered a dislocated shoulder and puncture wounds to his abdomen and arm, while an entire tusk went through his leg.
One medic at the hospital in Johannesburg told him: “You were lucky three times. The wounds in the right thigh, where the tusk has gone all the way up.
4
4
“You’ve got a nine-inch gash in your abdomen. A puncture in your bicep.” Nurses said he was the first hippo casualty they had ever treated as “they usually go straight to the morgue”.
The beast is said to have rammed another boat just days earlier but safari guides still took Roland and Shirley on the canoe tour in June.
Despite his horrifying encounter, Roland does not hate hippos.
He said: “I’m conscious we were in their territory, but I’m not very fond of what one did to me.”
The 5ft 10in dad also added he was glad hippos tend to target the “biggest object” — as it spared his 5ft 1in missus Shirley, 63.
She recalled: “I saw him surface and he took a gulp and then I saw him being thrown in the air.
“The hippo could have attacked any one of us and I can’t help feeling if it had been me, I wouldn’t be here now. So I think Roland took one for the team.”