April 23 (UPI) — A Colorado man vacationing in Hawaii survived a bite from a shark — after previously being attacked by a bear and a rattlesnake.
Dylan McWilliams of Grand Junction said he was surfing Thursday during his two-week vacation on the island of Kauai when a shark bit his leg.
“I was looking around and saw a lot of blood and I saw a shark underneath me,” he told KUSA-TV. “I started kicking at it.”
McWilliams said he rushed back to shore.
“The scariest part was swimming back,” McWilliams told HawaiiNewsNow. “There was blood behind me. I didn’t know where it was.”
McWilliams, who is recovering from some deep cuts to his leg, said the shark bite was not his first brush with near-death from an apex predator — he was attacked by a bear last summer while working as a survival instructor at a Boulder County, Colo., camp.
The bear “pulled me into its mouth and then it grabbed me with its teeth,” McWilliams said last year. “When it pulled, it tore the skin and scraped along my skull which was like the cracking noise that I heard.”
Before that, McWilliams said he survived a bite from a rattlesnake.
“It didn’t give me much venom, but I got a little bit to make me sick,” he said.
McWilliams, who considers Steve Irwin to be one of his heroes, said his experiences haven’t scared him away from wildlife.
“I’m out with the animals all the time. To me, it’s like, I was in the wrong spot at the wrong time,” he said.
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