April 13, 2009 — — A woman is lucky to be alive today after she jumped a fence Friday at the Berlin Zoo to enter the polar bears’ enclosure during feeding time and was subsequently attacked by one of the bears, said one zoo expert.
After long, panicked seconds in the bears’ moat with one of the massive animals biting at her backside, the woman was eventually pulled to safety and treated for severe injuries.
“What she’s done here, she should thank the good Lord she’s alive,” Jack Hanna, director emeritus at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, told “Good Morning America.” “It’s amazing to me.”
A video of the incident shows the woman thrashing in the bears’ moat and attempting to grab life preservers and ropes thrown by would-be rescuers while one of the bears repeatedly bites her rear end.
At one point the rescuers managed to lift the woman out of the water, but only seconds later she fell back in and was again attacked by the bear.
When rescuers were finally able to pull the woman out of the bears’ moat, she was taken to a nearby hospital, police said.
But the woman should be considered lucky, as the bears could have killed her just as quickly, Hanna said.
“Maybe they already fed and wanted to bat her around some, because let me tell you something, that polar bear, in one split second she would’ve been history,” Hanna said.
Police do not know why the woman jumped the fence into the enclosure, but did issue her a citation for trespassing.
Fellow polar bear Knut, the German zoo’s most famous attraction, was feet away throughout the attack but was reportedly not involved.
