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A STAG party reveller who crashed out after a boozy bash in a South African game reserve got a rude awakening as he was dragged out of his tent by two hungry hyenas.
Farmer Nicolas Hohls, 27, was sleeping off the night’s drinking in the Cape Vidal Nature Reserve when the predators forced their way into his tent and dragged him out by his head and leg.
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The married farmer screamed in agony as the snarling beasts tried to pull him into the darkness to eat him.
He had zipped up the tent door but left a six-inch gap for air — an open invitation for the hyenas.
One forced its head in and clamped its jaws around his foot, dragging him into the night, while the second sank its teeth into his head.
Terrified Nicolas said he went from fast asleep to fighting for his life in “a fraction of a second” as the hyenas shook him like a rag doll.
Bravely, he shoved his left hand down one hyena’s throat and jammed his right thumb into the other’s eye while kicking and screaming to break free.
Nicolas’ dad Colin, 55, was woken by the commotion and sprinted over with a torch.
He said: “I heard Nic go to bed then he suddenly started screaming clearly in agony and a hyena had grabbed his left leg and was pulling him out of the tent.
“A second hyena grabbed him by his head so Nic stuck his left hand into the first hyena’s mouth as deep as it would go and his right thumb in the other hyena’s eye.”
Colin continued: “Nic said they both backed off in shock and then they heard me coming and must have seen the torch and disappeared and when I got there. I never even saw them.
“It was all over in less than a minute but when I saw Nicolas he was covered in blood and I could hardly recognise him and there was a thick pool of his blood on the floor.”
With no paramedics nearby, Colin bundled his bloodied son into his station wagon and drove him for two hours through the dark to a hospital, arriving at 3am.
“It took two hours to get him there at about 3am on Sunday but there was a team of doctors waiting and they got him into surgery and went to work cleaning him up,” he said.
Colin said doctors warned that the greatest danger was infection, but they stabilised his son until plastic surgeons could step in at lunchtime to repair his face, hands and ankle.
Nicolas is now recovering well under close medical supervision.
His dad added that he considers him “extremely lucky,” as hyenas are merciless animals, and praised surgeons for their work, saying the outcome could have been far worse.
Nicolas needed around 30 stitches in his face and another 40 to his hand and legs.
His wife rushed to hospital to give him a hug and promised to get him home to their farm in Eshowe once doctors give the all-clear by the weekend.
A spokesman for Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, which manages the park, confirmed the attack.
He said: “We are going to catch the hyenas and work out the best way to proceed with them but in the meantime we ask all campers to make sure their tents are zipped up.
“In the incident at the weekend hyenas attacked a visitor after they had left their tent open following a party and in the previous attack a man’s nose was badly bitten.
“It is a wildlife park and we advise all our guests to be very mindful of that.”
Just last month a Johannesburg businessman at the same reserve had the end of his nose bitten off through a tent’s gauze window.
Hyenas — capable of growing two metres long, weighing 86kg and running at 40mph — are feared for their bone-crunching bite force of 1,100 psi, nearly twice that of a lion.
Normally scavengers, they kill fewer than half a dozen humans a year, but hunger and human food scraps can draw them into campsites.
Former ranger Andre Brink warned: “Hyenas in the wild fear only male lions and man but when they are in strong enough numbers then they have been known to attack.
“Their bite is so strong it means they can eat everything but an animal’s horns.”
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