A dramatic video captured the moment a 12-year-old Australian girl saved her guinea pig from an eight-foot-long python Sunday.
Rosie Whitman was looking in the bushes of the family garden for her pet guinea, Maxibon, when she found it in the jaws of the large snake, according to ABC 7. Rosie immediately launched into action, grabbed the python and began wildly swinging it in circles in attempts to free Maxibon.
“I just got this instinct and didn’t even think it through,” Rosie said in an interview with 7News Australia. “I was just like, ‘Grab the snake. Grab the snake.’” (RELATED: Wild Video Show Man Snatching Giant Python With Bare Hands To Save His Cats From Being Eaten)
Rosie’s father, Luke Wightman, said he heard his daughter “screaming at the top of her lungs.”
When he came out into the yard, Wightman saw her swinging the snake “like a hammer thrower” before helping her free the guinea pig and throwing the snake over the garden wall.
“I realized that wasn’t ideal, and I chased after it and watched it slither away unhurt, although a little dizzy,” Whitman said, according to Storyful.
Rosie’s uncle Kip Wightman, a Brisbane radio host, shared the footage of his niece heroically rescuing Maxibon on Instagram.
Rosie’s dad said she “is doing amazing” and that she was “just super relieved that Maxibon survived.”
Maxibon is also reportedly doing well and acting “like nothing happened,” Luke said, adding that the guinea pig was “chilling with his brother Yochi.”
Luke told 7News Australia he is “proud” that his daughter had the “guts to pick up a snake and save her pet’s life.”