Bulgarian treated for Zebra bite

JAKARTA (JP): A Bulgarian expatriate was bitten by a hungry zebra which mistook her hand for peanuts at Taman Safari Indonesia near Puncak Sunday.

Irina Tcherjelova was enjoying the park with friends around 2 p.m. Sunday when they stopped to admire a small zebra herd.

"When the prettiest one approached the car I held out a handful of peanuts as you do for horses, because I thought that was the way you fed zebras," said Irina.

"But she took all my fingers in her mouth and wouldn't let go. I screamed 'Zebra, Zebra let go', but she wouldn't. But finally she did," she said.

"There was only this tiny little scratch on my little finger, and the smallest drop of blood, and I would have done nothing about it but my friends sent me to the hospital because they told me I could get tetanus from Zebras."

The staff at the hospital were very surprised to hear they had a patient with a zebra bite, she said, and even more surprised that she wanted treatment for the tiny scratch.

"But they were very sympathetic, they led me to a bed and made me lie down and drew the curtains while they disinfected and bandaged my finger and gave me anti-zebra-toxin shots." (liza)