Photo used for illustrative purposes.

Gulf Today Report

We all admire wild animals – from a distance, that is. We would not have the guts to face them, specially tigers and lions – no way. As children we would go to the circus to see these exotic creatures perform to the orders of the ringmaster. But what if we had a real close encounter with the deadly species, or were even attacked by them?  Well, one man in India with enormous guts had a brainwave of a solution: he shoved a rock down a tiger’s throat until it could take it no more and fled.

The incident took place in the country’s Madhya Pradesh state, around 300km from Bhopal.

The victim, Sunil Dhotre, and his wife Sarla had set out from home with other residents in their village to collect mahua (also known as the honey or butter tree) flowers on Friday. Sunil then felt thirsty and stepped behind near a nullah to drink water.

It was then that the shocking incident happened. A tiger sprang on him from nowhere and savaged his face and hands. Sunil put up a brave fight, undeterred, though the force of the attack hurled him to the ground. With the tiger towering over him and attempting to go for his neck, Sunil scrambled around for whatever he could use as a weapon to unshackle its iron grip.

His fingers closed around a large rock, which he gripped and on a whim shoved it into the mouth of the animal, according to Indo-Asian News Service.

The predator tried to shake it off, but Sunil refused to let go. His pluck ultimately lucked out: he kept pushing it deeper until the tiger felt it wasn't worth its while to stay in the fight. In the meantime other villagers also gathered and tried to scare the tiger away with a lot of commotion.

The tiger turned and ran back into the forest. It then dawned on a bleeding Sunil that he had fought a tiger and was still alive, something which shocked him as well.