Jogger Spent Four Days 'Stuck like Glue' in Mud

Jogger Spent Four Days 'Stuck like Glue' in Mud.

From Jacqui Goddard, of The Times, in Miami September 5, 2006

A jogger survived four days stranded in waist-deep mud after getting lost and falling into a swamp during his lunchtime run.

Volunteers who had searched for Eddie Meadows, 62, since he disappeared from work last week found him “stuck like glue” in a bog, covered in insect bites and drinking fetid water to stay alive.

As rescuers approached, he looked up calmly and asked: “Do you have a phone? I want to call my wife.”

Police in Orlando, Florida, said that Mr Meadows had survived by sipping water from the swamp and avoided sun exposure because he was under a shady tree canopy and slathered in mud. He even managed to sleep where he stood, they said, with his feet immobilised by the thick muck.

“This stuff is like quicksand, you can’t get out,” said Corporal Jim Roop, of the University of Central Florida police department.

Mr Meadows vanished during his lunchbreak on Friday at the University of Central Florida’s research park in Orlando, where he works as a civilian contractor for the US Army.

His wife, Ardis, and two grown-up sons appeared on local television to plead for help in finding him and 50 volunteers armed with maps and compasses scoured the area. Soldiers also joined the hunt and police even used bloodhounds to try to pick up his scent, but there were no clues.

Finally, yesterday, Ron Eaglin, a volunteer, was combing woodland on a remote corner of the university campus when he heard noises. But at first he mistook the stricken jogger for a fellow searcher.

“I heard some sloshing off in the woods, it didn’t sound like a deer, so I yelled ‘Hello?’ and then I heard ‘Help, help, help, help,’” Mr Eaglin recalled.

“I said ‘Are you looking for Eddie Meadows?’, and he said ‘I AM Eddie Meadows’.” Mr Eaglin added: “I really thought we were looking for a body.”

Mr Meadows is in training for the Baltimore Marathon and leaves his desk every lunchtime to go for a jog around the campus. “He went up the path where he normally goes, then thought he’d find a different way to go around. But the woods are really, really dense and instead of turning back he went further and ended up in one of those swampy areas we call ‘muck’,” Corporal Roop said.

Mr Meadows asked his rescuers for water and chocolate, then in his delirium, insisted that he should finish his run, jogging a short distance before he was helped to a waiting ambulance. He was said to be recovering well.

“He was in good spirits but maybe a little disorientated,” Corporal Roop said.

“After four days, you start losing some of that hope but it turned out to be a great ending. He kept his cool and he was in good shape because he’s a marathon runner. His family were ecstatic.”