A great white shark nibbled a South Australian grandma in the ankle, and she assumed it was a practical joke at first.
Then things got serious.
On Monday morning, Pamela Cook, 64, was swimming with a local swimming group in Beachport, around 380 kilometers southeast of Adelaide, when a shark mauled her.
The great white shark attacked the grandma twice as she was swimming on an Australian beach with her pals, but she was able to escape death.
On October 2, near Beachport Jetty, the shark attacked, leaving her with many bite wounds that required 200 stitches to repair.
Cook was swimming with her swimming club when she felt a “basketball-sized jaw” clamp around her leg.
“I started yelling “shark, shark!” and suddenly it disappeared,” she said.
The shark, however, was not finished with her and returned to sink its fangs into her left thigh.
She said that the only thing on her mind at the time was the 2005 shark attack death of family friend Jarrod Stehbens at Glenelg beach.
The grandmother’s “life flashed before my eyes” as the shark “kind of chewed” her leg.
She fought off the monster with her damaged hand and swam fifty feet to a ladder.
After getting out of the water, according to Cook, she had to tape down a loose piece of flesh.
Two days after Cook’s incident, her swimming group got back in the water. Despite being timid since the attack, she expects to join them again before Christmas.
When Greg, her husband, got the call that his wife had been attacked, he was out getting a coffee.
He mentioned that Pam swims every day with a group of people from Beachport called the Sea Urchins and Slugs.
Pam was accompanied by two other women who escorted her to the end of the jetty and up a ladder when she was attacked.
One of them even removed her shirt to bandage Pam’s arm and stem the bleeding.
