A father had a real scare when he saw his two-year-old daughter lifted into the air by a giraffe during a driving tour of a Texas safari park.
The family was in their vehicle on the trail that allows viewing of different species of animals at the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose and could feed them from their van.
“We stopped to feed the giraffes and I turned around to look out the back window,” Jason Toten told CBS station KWTX on Wednesday.
“That’s when I saw the giraffe rummaging around and then grabbing it,” he said.
The long-necked animal grabbed Paisley by his shirt from the back of the van. The mother, who was next to the child, started screaming, which encouraged the giraffe to let her go. The little girl then fell back into her mother’s arms.
“Paisley was holding the bag and the giraffe went to get the bag, not her, but she ended up grabbing her shirt and hugging her,” the little girl’s father said.
“My heart stopped, my stomach gave out… I was scared,” he recalled.
Mr. Toten assured that his family had not broken any rules put in place by the animal park, whether it was keeping the doors closed, feeding the animals with cups and not with their hands, but also standing at 15 meters from the barriers.
All’s well that ends well as Paisley was able to leave the park with a stuffed giraffe as a souvenir of his misadventure.
