(GoRealNewsNow.com) – In a bizarre but terrifying incident, a woman was viciously attacked and heavily injured by a rampaging otter while river tubing with friends in Southern Montana.
Mauled in the surprise otter ambush, Jen Royce was left with multiple bites and scratches all over her face and body and lost half of her ear.
The New York Post reports that Royce and two other women were floating down the Jefferson River close to Bozeman around 8 p.m. when the angry otter attacked them.
“I saw one otter right behind my friend before it attacked. I didn’t even have a chance to get the words ‘there is an otter behind you’ out of me before it attacked her,” the woman revealed in a Facebook post.
“It bit my face in several places, both of my ears, my arms, my hands, my legs, my thighs, and my ankle,” she elaborated, describing the otter attack as “vicious and relentless.”
“My friends were bit on the hands and on their bottoms. One friend’s thumb was SHREDDED and she has bite marks all over her body as well,” Royce revealed further.
The three of them were tubing in a deep part of the river, which hindered their attempts to fight off the wild animal.
“Once I had my feet under me I was able to fight back better and was eventually able to pull myself out of the river. It swam away after that,” the victim wrote.
The violent otter attack left her bleeding on one bank; another of her friends had ended up on the opposite bank, while the third woman got stuck on a rock in the middle of the river.
“God’s honest truth, I did not think I was going to make it out of that river. I had no clue if my friends were going to make it out. But by the grace of God we did,” Royce informed.
However, that wasn’t the end of their ordeal, as they feared the otter could return. The two women on the banks threw stones in the water to try to protect their friend remaining in the river.
One of the women managed to get help through a smartphone SOS feature.
“I have lost almost half of my right ear. But I am lucky, and I am grateful, and I am alive,” she concluded.
Woman mauled by angry otter while tubing down Montana river https://t.co/H3n9p4yQTo pic.twitter.com/BUD9KaYPwL
— New York Post (@nypost) August 13, 2023