A family in Texas got a bit more than they bargained for on a wildlife tour when a hungry giraffe plucked a 2-year-old girl straight out of their pickup truck.
Jason Toten told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that his family was enjoying a drive-thru safari at the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, about 60 miles southwest of Forth Worth, when a giraffe decided to get up close and personal with his daughter, Paisley.
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Paisley and her mother were sitting in the bed of Toten's truck, feeding the animals with food provided by the park, when a giraffe walked over to them and after a quick interaction, picked the little girl up by its mouth.
"I looked out the back window and I saw the giraffe... and then up she went," Toten told the Star-Telegram. "My heart stopped, it scared the hell out of me."
The report noted that nearly as soon as the towering giant picked her up, it dropped her back into the truck. Video taken from another vehicle shows the girl falling from the giraffe's mouth into her mother's arms.
Toten doesn't think the giraffe has a taste for children, just that it was hungry and was trying to grab the bag of food his daughter was holding.
"It ended up getting her shirt and lifting her out of the truck," he told the Star-Telegram, adding that the tot wasn't phased. "She wasn't even scared. As soon as her mom caught her, she went 'oh.'"
The wildlife center has not commented on the incident.
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