An Australian woman thought she was a goner when she was viciously mauled by a pack of dingoes — a rare attack that left her with bite wounds all over her body and an ankle chomped down to the bone.
Debbie Rundle was eating lunch at the Telfer gold and cooper mine, where she works in the north of Western Australia, when she was suddenly attacked last Wednesday, The West Australian reported.
The 54-year-old mom said a young dingo approached her as she was eating her sandwich. It grabbed her phone and took off — so she followed it in hopes of getting it back.
But she was encountered by two other dingoes who immediately began savaging her legs.
“They were just starting to bite into me, I was still backing out, they really latched on,” she said. “They were munching and I was screaming for help. I looked down and I thought oh my, am I gonna die? Are they gonna get me down?”
Rundle said the dingoes — a type of wild dog native to Australia and closely related to the New Guinea singing dog — lunged at her for no reason.
“I just didn’t expect it, they’re just not like that around the camp normally. The smaller dingo had my mobile phone and the paper towel and he just raced off with it,” she said.
Co-workers rushed to help save Rundle, whose right ankle was bitten down to the bone. She was taken to the Royal Perth Hospital and underwent surgery.
“It’s amazing so grateful that they came to my rescue,” she said. “There was blood everywhere on the ground and I just looked at my wounds and… Oh my God.”
A plastic surgeon said he’s confident he can save Rundle’s leg but she’ll have to undergo more surgery on Wednesday, when doctors will take skin, a vein and an artery from near her ribs in order to reconstruct her ankle.
Dr. Bradley Smith, who lectures at Central Queensland University, said human and dingo interactions are common in the Pilbara region — but attacks are not.
“Interactions with dingoes and people at this mine site happen daily. So we’re talking hundreds of interactions a week,” Smith said. “None of them lead, or ever get to, this point. So there was something in this incident, that I don’t know, that’s escalated it a little bit.”
