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Kelly Diedring, an animal care specialist at Busch Gardens, won the Animal Planet's King of the Jungle title Monday night in the show's two-hour finale.
Diedring, 23, beat 11 other nature specialists, who were vying for a chance to host a wildlife special. Among the animals the Texas native had to face were 300-pound tigers, boa constrictors and alligators.
"It was amazing because going into this, it had been a dream come true for me to do anything for Animal Planet," Diedring said.
The show was filmed in late August and early September at a wildlife sanctuary in South Carolina. In one screen-test challenge, she got to choose between working with a rattlesnake, cobra or python.
"I chose a python because I wasn't about to work with a venomous snake," she said. "So I went in with this python, but unfortunately, he was really aggressive and thought it would be fun to bite me. He didn't, but it was exciting television while I fumbled around trying not to get bitten."
The hardest part for Diedring was keeping quiet that she had won. Her Animal Planet special will air Dec. 22.
Osbourne improving, breathing on his ownOzzy Osbourne is making progress after his quad bike accident and can now breathe on his own, hospital officials said Monday. The former Black Sabbath lead singer was able to talk to his wife, Sharon, at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, west of London, where he was taken after the Dec. 8 accident, the hospital said in a statement.
Osbourne, 55, has been in intensive care since the accident at his estate in Buckinghamshire, southern England. He fractured his left collarbone, eight ribs and a neck vertebra and had surgery shortly after admission to restore the flow to a damaged blood vessel.
The Daily Mirror tabloid last week quoted Sharon Osbourne as saying her husband stopped breathing and his heart stopped for a minute after the accident. A security guard had resuscitated him, she said.