Ryan Bold received 23 staples to the back of his head where he was mauled by the cub.<\/p>\n
He also received three staples on his left arm and an open wound on his index finger had to be stitched his mom Dayle told www.mobserver.co.za after the attack.<\/p>\n
Both the lodge owner, Mr Willie Fourie, and Mbidi’s veteran animal handler, Mr John Wagenaar, blame Ryan for the attack because he ran in the tiger’s enclosure.<\/p>\n
\u201cVisitors are told before entering the enclosure not to run because the cats will definitely chase,\u201d Wagenaar told www.mobserver.co.za.<\/p>\n
Ryan was accompanied by his mom, sister Ashleigh and her boyfriend Theo Johnson.<\/p>\n
Dayle kicked and punched the 6 month old cub, but the cat would not let her son go.<\/p>\n
A volunteer rushed over to pry the cub’s jaws open from Ryan’s head and Wagenaar says that Ryan has him to thank for his life.<\/p>\n
Mr Fourie says that the Bolds all signed indemnity forms and that they entered the enclosure at their own risk.<\/p>\n
The incident was not reported to the authorities and Mr Fourie says that the attack will not affect any holding permits.<\/p>\n
Ryan returned to Durban on Thursday, after the family came up to Dullstrrom to visit Dayle’s sister for the holiday.<\/p>\n
Dayle says they are all very traumatised by the event though no permanent injury was suffered.<\/p>\n
Mbidi says Ryan was tended to by a level one first aider and lodge personnel also accompanied the Bolds to hospital where his wounds were cleaned and stitched.<\/p>\n
Mr Fourie says a fully grown tiger weighs more than 450kg and that the cub only followed its natural hunting instincts when Ryan broke the rules and started running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A twelve year old boy was attacked by a 65kg white tiger cub at Mbidi Lodge on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":9792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Gerhard Rheeder","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[1341,1339,1340],"class_list":["post-9791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines","tag-mbidi-lodge","tag-tiger-attack","tag-wildlife"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"tag_labels":["Mbidi Lodge","Tiger attack","wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}