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Rupununi resident survives 15-minute battle with 150-lb jaguar
Clarence Bernard displays the bandaged wounds he sustained during his near death battle with a 150-pound jaguar.
A 28-year-old Amerindian fisherman is recovering at the Lethem Hospital after miraculously surviving a 15-minute battle with a ferocious female jaguar.
At the end of the battle, the jaguar lay dead with stab wounds inflicted by Clarence Bernard, who sustained severe injuries to both of his hands and one of his feet, while fighting off the vicious animal.
Bernard, who hails from Parikwarunawu Village, located some 30 miles south of Lethem, had left his village and went fishing about one mile away early Monday morning.
He recounted his near death ordeal to this newspaper while receiving treatment at the Lethem Hospital yesterday.
“I was alone in the savannah when this beast suddenly appeared in front of me. I stared at it and it was a jaguar, about one and a half metres in length and about one hundred and fifty pounds. It was a female,” Bernard related.
He said that he stood still for a while but the animal sprung at his head forcing him to use his right hand to cover his face.
The animal caught his right hand in its mouth and he was thrown to the ground under the weight of the large cat.
As the animal held on to his right hand, Bernard used his left hand to turn the beast over.
“I kicked it in the ribs and it fell away from me,” Bernard said. Taking advantage of the brief respite, Bernard managed to grab a knife he was carrying in his waist but before he could settle himself, the cat attacked him again.
Once more he used his already bleeding right hand to ward off the jaguar and again it held on tightly to the limb.
They were both on the ground again and this time Bernard used his knife to stab the cat three times – twice in the rib in the region of the heart and once to its throat.
“She released my hand and lay still, dead. I fought her for about ten to fifteen minutes. All the time I kept hollering,” Bernard recounted.
A few minutes later his father and his brother-in-law, who heard the screams despite the distance, came to his rescue.
The badly injured Bernard was placed on a bicycle and taken back to his village from where an ambulance collected him and took him to the Lethem Hospital.
Many residents had complained about the presence of jaguars lurking in the densely vegetated surroundings of the Rupununi.
A few months ago, a shepherd had reported the loss of several sheep following a jaguar attack.
The residents are appealing for some sort of assistance to rid the area of the potentially deadly felines.
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