When on vacation, you may take some time to engage in your favorite hobbies, and ideally you expect no great drama to happen while you are at it.
That’s exactly what Gus Hutt’s plan was while vacationing on the Matata Beach on North Island. He was fishing when he spotted what seemed to be a small figure in the body of water.
At first he thought he was seeing a doll but then he realized it was actually a small child after the figure "let out a little squeak."
The small boy had wandered away from parents' tent where they were camping nearby and somehow ended up in the ocean.
"I thought he was a doll.[Even as] I reached out and grabbed him by the arm, I still thought it was a doll," Mr Hutt told New Zealand-based Whakatane Beacon.
"His face looked just like porcelain with his short hair wetted down, but then he let out a little squeak and I thought, 'oh God, this is a baby and it's alive'."
"He was floating at a steady pace... if I had been just a minute later, I wouldn't have seen him," Mr Hutt said.
"It wasn't his time"
"He was bloody lucky, but he just wasn't meant to go, it wasn't his time."
"Apparently the baby had been very excited to be on the beach. It was the couple's first night staying here. It's the first time they've been here," Rebecca Salter, the co-owner of Murphy's Holiday Camp, told the BBC.
The baby's mother "screamed" when she was informed that her baby was found in the water -- but they were very relieved to hear he was OK.
"It came as a shock to everyone. It was a very, very lucky result... it could have been a very tragic incident," said Mrs Salter. "It's a freakish miracle."
Score one for quick thinking, and what could have been a horrible tragedy averted.
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