A man clashed with a crocodile — and survived.
Australian cattle producer Colin Deveraux told Australia’s ABC News that he was attacked by one of the creatures as he headed towards the Finniss River for some fencing. He said he was standing by the lake when he saw a fish behaving strangely and swimming towards the middle of the pool.
“The water receded and it was down to this dirty water in the middle. I took two steps and [the crocodile] it latched onto my right foot,” Deveraux recalled to ABC News. “It was a real grab and he shook me like a rag doll and flew back into the water, pulling me.”
But the farmer wasn’t going to let the creature win without a fight, so he kicked it in the ribs with his other foot and even tried to bite back. By a lucky twist of fate, he said he managed to bite the crocodile in such a way that it freed him.
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“I was in such an awkward position … but my teeth happened to catch his eyelid. It was quite thick, like I was holding the skin, but I jerked back at his eyelid and he let go,” he explained.
He said the whole incident happened in about eight seconds. After the crocodile released him, that was all it took for him to escape the situation, and he “jumped off and took off in big strides to where my car was” – all with the crocodile in tow.
“He chased me a little, maybe [13 feet]but then he stopped,” Deveraux told ABC News.
However, he noticed that he had an open wound on his right leg from where the crocodile had bitten him and he had to get rid of it immediately before anything else, using a towel and some rope to make a makeshift tourniquet to stop the bleeding.
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His brother eventually managed to reach him and take him to the Royal Darwin Hospital, which is located 80 miles north of where he was, writes the BBC. He has been staying there for the past month to receive treatment from an injury.
He said the biggest problem with the wound was that it was infected with “all the bad bacteria” from the murky water the crocodile came out of.
“[My leg] was open [badly] and for more than ten days in a row, I think, they had to flush him,” said Deveraux, though he noted that he was lucky the crocodile had bitten him on the leg and not anywhere else.
Diver fights off crocodile after jaws clamp down on its head: ‘I thought it was a shark’
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“If [the crocodile] if he had bitten me somewhere else, it would have been different,” he added.
He told ABC News that although the crocodile was “removed” from the area, the memories of the attack stayed with him and helped him look at his life differently: “It means I have to change what I’m doing. I’ve been walking on that road for too long swamp land fixing fences and living life, but it opened my eyes.”
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Source: HIS Education