Mitchell Willetts
The Charlotte Observer
(TNS)
A giraffe recently frightened a Texas family by grabbing their 2-year-old daughter from the bed of their pickup truck, video shows.
Jason Toten went on a drive-thru safari with his fiancee and their children on Saturday, June 1, he told McClatchy News in an interview. But about halfway through the wildlife tour at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, things got too exciting.
“We were having a little family day, just getting out of the house,” Toten said.
Fossil Rim provides food for visitors to feed some of the animals, and the giraffes were apparently hungry.
Toten’s fiancee was in the bed of the truck with their daughter, Paisley, when one of the towering animals walked over to them, video shows. The girl’s mother can be heard talking in the background as Paisley and the giraffe share a gentle moment — and then the video cuts out as the girl suddenly disappears from view.
“I looked out the back window and I saw the giraffe … and then up she went,” Toten said. “My heart stopped, it scared the hell out of me.”
His fear was short-lived, he said. His fiancee uttered a firm “hey” to the giraffe, and it let the girl go almost as fast as it had picked her up, he said.
Another video taken from a vehicle behind Toten’s truck shows Paisley drop harmlessly from the giraffe’s mouth and back into the bed.
“I guess it startled the giraffe,” Toten said.
“She wasn’t even scared,” he added. “As soon as her mom caught her, she went ‘oh.’”
With Paisley safe, they quickly drove away.
McClatchy News reached out to Fossil Rim for comment but did not immediately hear back.
Toten says the encounter was an accident, that the giraffe was trying to grab a bag of food Paisley was holding but missed.
“It ended up getting her shirt and lifting her out of the truck,” he said.
The next stop they made was to the gift shop, and Paisley had one thing on her mind.
“We go in there and all she wanted was a giraffe toy and a giraffe T-shirt,” Toten said. “We ended up getting her both, we figured she deserved it.”
The experience isn’t going to keep them away from Fossil Rim.
“We’ll definitely go back,” he said, adding they’ll still ride in the bed of a truck when they do, “because that’s an experience in itself.”
Fossil Rim is in Glen Rose, which is a roughly 55-mile drive southwest of Fort Worth.
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