When it comes to rescuing a spouse, the bravery I show when my wife calls me frantically about a cockroach doesn’t come close to Anna McKee’s courage during her honeymoon safari in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. She didn’t stomp on an insect with her shoe; she punched a hippopotamus in the face to save her husband.
Sam and Anna McKee’s honeymoon was in September 2025, but they shared their harrowing experience in their very first interview this week. The couple, from Port Angeles, northwest of Seattle, were a few days into what Sam called their “trip of a lifetime.” They were traveling with a guide in a mokoro, a canoe-like boat, through a flooded area to see plants. They said danger was evident even before the tour started: guides had spotted a mother hippo in defense mode in a deep area they planned to avoid.
This is the second “Predator Watch” column about a hippo this year. August’s story about a hippo chasing a group of tourists on a boat also took place in Botswana. The tour guide kept them safe by accelerating the boat. Sam was not so lucky.
Also Read: Predator Watch: Video Captures Hippo Chasing Tour Boat in Botswana
After their boat crossed the channel of the lagoon into the deep area with the hippo, Sam, who was sitting in the front of the boat, told Good Morning Britain that he heard “a really loud explosion,” not a gun but “splashing and grunting noises.” He turned around to see a hippo with its mouth open charging at them (the interview shows a photo of the exact hippo with its mouth open).
Sam’s first instinct was to stay out of the water, but at the very moment that he grabbed both sides of the boat, the hippo grabbed him in its jaws. No one can describe a wild animal attack better than the survivor. Sam explained:
It grabbed me on my torso, and it was both on my front and at the back of me, and then it was pressing me down into the bottom of the swamp as well. And it was just an incredible force. At first, I had so much adrenaline that I didn’t feel a lot of pain, but just a force that I can’t describe. You know, the closest thing I can imagine is like a car crash.
Good Morning Britain host Ranvir Singh then asked Anna whether she was still in the boat, watching as her new husband appeared to be getting killed by a hippo. Anna said she and the guide were thrown from the boat when the hippo hit it. Although she was disoriented when she surfaced, she could see Sam “horizontal in the hippo’s mouth.” At that moment, she faced a fight-or-flight decision and immediately chose to fight, even though she wasn’t sure whether what was happening was real or whether Sam was already dead. So she ran toward the hippo with clenched fists and started punching it. (Read another story about someone being saved from a wild animal by a punch in this “Predator Watch” column.)
Anna demonstrated in the interview what she likes to think were the “nice blows” she was throwing at the hippo. Singh, who was set to interview Sylvester Stallone later in the program, joked that she showed more bravery than Rocky.
Still in the hippo’s mouth, Sam did not witness any of his wife’s heroics. He felt only the crushing on his torso and, later, his legs. Then, suddenly, he was free: “Next thing I know, I popped up out of the water. Anna was standing just a few feet away from me and I tried to walk towards her but my left leg just wouldn’t respond to anything my brain was telling it.”
Anna felt immense relief that he was alive and that the hippo had sunk back into the water, but she knew they were not out of danger yet, whether from the hippo itself or from crocodiles. She managed to get Sam back to shore, and only there did she see his intestines coming out of his back. It was the second time she thought her new husband would not survive.
Remarkably, it was 18 hours before they reached a hospital, and Sam, who had “softball-size” holes in his back and left leg, was without pain relief for 13 of those hours. He said he feels lucky to have survived.
While there is lots of laughter in the interview about an attack that, as Singh says, “doesn’t even feel real,” Anna’s final words bring home what was really at stake:
Yeah, it was pretty horrific at the time, but we have a lot to be thankful for. Sam's my best friend. We've been together for 14 years. We're high school sweethearts, so I'm just really thankful that we get more time together.
