A former worker at an animal rehabilitation centre has recalled how she was injured during an encounter with a lion while working in South Africa.
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In 2013, then 18-year-old Lauren Fagen was cleaning out the cages of two lions at the Moholoholo rehab centre when one of them bit her on the leg according to the Independent.
Duma the lion reached through the bars of his cage and dragged the Canadian through an open gap before she was saved by fellow volunteer and British vet Natalie Bennett, who tried to fight off the lions with a broom.
For his new book, Bite Club, Fagen told author Dougie Wight that ‘Duma stuck his entire leg through the bars, nearly the full length of it because of how far she was away.’
‘Before I could react, he got me with the tip of his nail into the middle of my right calf,’ she recalled.
‘It was like butter, it went right in. I felt a thud – he had pulled me on to my back, I hit the ground and was looking up at the ceiling.’
‘He sliced open my leg. It looked like what you would see at the butcher, like something from a dead cow that would hang from the ceiling. I thought, that can’t be my leg because that’s not what … wait, it is my leg.’
Fagen said that she started screaming for help while kicking with her other leg but the lion immediately pulled it through the bars up to the groin.
Duma’s female mate, Tree, then joined in the attack, gnawing at Fagen’s feet.
The volunteer suffered ten flesh wounds on her legs and feet during the attack and described how her left kneecap ‘nearly came completely off and was hanging by a piece of skin’.
In retrospect, ten years after the attack, the now 28-year-old said that while she suffered muscle and nerve damage ‘it could’ve been a lot worse.’
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