Two young Massachusetts boys are back home safe after spending a freezing night stuck in a muddy swamp.
According to the Daily Mail, Jake Waterman and Drew Covney, both 12, were pulled out of a dark swamp in Halifax, Mass. Friday night after getting lost during a hike.
The boys intended to stay in range of the backyard, but took a wrong turn and wandered deep into nearby woods and straight into swamp land.
'We decided to go and see if we could find the end," Waterman told ABC News. 'We went deep out in the swamp and there's a lot of water out there.'
Waterman did have a cell phone on him but he was afraid to call home since he was sure to get in trouble. Eventually he did call his brother when the cold began to set in.
"He thought I was kidding around and thought I was just dumb because I couldn't -- I couldn't find my way home," Waterman told the Daily Mail.
“He told me to head back. So we turned back for like a half an hour, 45 minutes, and then our shoes -- they got soaked, and our socks, so we had to take off our shoes and socks, and we sat down and I called my Mom and she called the police from there,” recalled Coveney to WCVB.
“I was worried because we didn’t know how we were going to get back,” Waterman added. “I wasn’t having full reception on my cell phone.”
Sergeant Broderick told the Daily Mail, "The kids know the area pretty well but by the time they made the call, it was getting dark and they were cold and tired so they had had enough."
A state police helicopter spoke to the boys on the cellphone and was able to pinpoint their location. Two Halifax police sergeants then waded into the swamp to get them.
'You don’t think about it, you just try to get into the woods and get them,” Sergeant Patrick Sterling told the Daily Mail.
When the boys were finally rescued they were barefoot and freezing. They had been missing for several hours.
"They were actually barefoot at time. Their sneakers got pulled off in the mud and water," explained Sergeant Ted Broderick.
"It was pretty awful. It was probably knee to waist-deep water…trees down…they were actually standing on a little stump that was out of the water so they could stay dry," he added.
The boys were taken to a nearby hospital as a precaution but neither suffered any injuries from the terrifying adventure.
"My brother said he's going to give me a survival lesson," Waterman said once he was safe at home. "Trust me, he doesn't know any more than I do."
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