You're casually paroozing the African wilderness on a casual safari trip. You see some elephants. You snap a picture. You see a giraffe. You ooh and awe. You see a cheetah. You get down to take a photo when all of a sudden your sunny afternoon goes south. You feel sharp claws dig into your flesh as you're dragged to the ground. You turn, and for a split second, you lock eyes with a bloodthirsty feline before its fangs take a hold of your arm with no intentions of letting go. They tear and rip and devour as the red in your eyes slowly fades to black. Then it's over.
World renowned comedian and actor Adam Sandler had a brush with a similar experience on a recent vacation, barely escaping the jaws of death. During a private safari, Sandler had the opportunity to feed a cheetah with his bare hands, but as he crouched by a pool of water, the cheetah took to plans of its own.
"A very nice guy let me in with the cheetah and said I could feel the cheetah with my hands," Sandler told David Letterman. "And something went a little wrong."
The cheetah pounced on Sandler from behind. Had the tamer not been present, Sandler fears he wouldn't be around to tell the tale. He thought for a moment that he was to meet his maker, but then remained relatively calm as the guide jumped into action.
"They said you were not supposed to bend down low with the water," Sandler said. "My friends say I played it pretty cool but I had a stiff neck at the time and when he jumped on me I just thought 'Oh my neck."
"All I was going to do was let him eat me," he added. "There was not one part of me that was going to fight back. I was like, 'So this is how I'm dying. That's great."
Sandler lives to breathe another breath, but he may think twice before hand feeding cheetahs in the future.