This Hippo Attack Story Is a Must Read

By Scott Willson · 2026-10-21

Sam and Anna McKee of Port Angeles, Washington were on their honeymoon in Botswana’s Okavango Delta when a hippo charged their canoe and grabbed Sam by the torso, pinning him underwater. Anna was thrown from the boat, surfaced to see her husband in the hippo’s mouth, and punched it with her bare fists until it let him go. Sam walked out of the swamp holding his own intestines in and waited about 18 hours to reach a hospital in Johannesburg. He survived, spent nine months with a colostomy bag, and took up pottery during his recovery.

This is all around one of the craziest stories I’ve ever heard, and this couple should have been a guest on Joe Rogan three weeks ago. Fuck Romeo and Juliet, fuck Bonnie and Clyde, and fuck You’ve Got Mail, because saving your newly married husband from the jaws of a hippo by punching it is the ultimate love story. A hippo weighs about three tons, and Anna watched one grab her husband and her move was to run straight at it and start throwing punches. I honestly don’t know if I’d do that for anybody.

The dude’s guts are hanging out of his back and she’s pulling him out of a crocodile infested river. That is the most ride or die wifey material broad of all time.

Sidenote: I hope they’re getting a full refund from whatever tour group this was, cause that guy failed big time. How do you just let your wooden canoe float into a mother hippo’s territory, especially when you already saw the hippo and specifically said everybody needed to stay away from that area? How do you literally float right back to that same spot? Get to rowing, boy.

Everybody is scared of the wrong animals. Sharks get a whole week of TV every summer and kill about six people a year worldwide, and bears kill two or three people a year in North America while every hiker in America walks around with bear spray. Crocodiles kill around 1,000 people a year, which is almost three mother fucking people a day getting dragged into a river. That’s the craziest stat I’ve read in a long time, remind me never to go near an African river. Hippos kill an estimated 500 people a year on top of that, and they are vegetarians, which means they are not even hungry when they do it, they just hate you.

Sam survived, but it took nine months with a colostomy bag and a lot of physical therapy, and somewhere in there Anna signed him up for pottery classes to help keep his head right. Now the guy’s making bowls.

I’d marry that girl without a prenup all day every day.