A terrified impala dived into a tourist's car in hopes of escaping a hungry cheetah.
An SUV full of tourists at Kruger National Park in South Africa were surprised when the antelope jumped through the window with a cheetah hot at its heels, CNN reported.
Another tourist in a nearby vehicle videotaped the whole thing.
"We started freaking out, going crazy; we couldn't believe it, we were absolutely dumbstruck," Samantha Pittendrigh, who shot the video, said. "All of a sudden we saw the impala jump out of the bushes and then someone started screaming, 'It is in the car! It is in the car!'
According to Pittendrigh there were also screams of "Open the door! Open the door!'"
A passenger opened the door to let the uninvited passenger out, the impala cooperated and exited the SUV. The confused cheetahs gave up and hid in a bush, they didn't pursue the impala as it ran away.
"My family is so jealous. In all the years my parents have been going to Kruger Park they have never seen anything like it and we do go regularly," said Pittendrigh. "It really is a once-in-a-lifetime thing and we managed to be in the right place at the right time."
Impalas are agile creatures, able to leap distances of up to 33 feet, according to National Geographic. The antelope can get 10 feet up into the air when making a jump.
Cheetah's regularly hunt impala's, but in 2010 three cheetahs made friends with one of the baby antelopes, the Daily Mail reported.
Three cheetah brothers went for a group of impala, but decided they weren't hungry after all.
"They knocked [the baby impala] down, but then they lost interest,' said Michel. "For more than 15 minutes, they remained with the young antelope without doing anything other than licking it or putting their paws on the impala's head," photographer Michel Denis-Huot, who captured photos of the strange interaction, said.
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