Child recovering after 52-hour trek in woods

CRYSTAL CITY, Mo. (AP) -- A 3-year-old boy was recuperating Thursday after spending 52 hours in the rugged terrain of Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest.

Joshua Childers was found in remarkably good condition by a volunteer searcher Wednesday afternoon three miles from his home. A hospital in Crystal City where he is recuperating lists him in fair condition.

Joshua's father, Adam Childers, turned down several media requests for interviews on Thursday but spoke briefly to reporters after the child was hospitalized Wednesday.

"I don't know how he did it," Childers said. "I don't know grown men that could do it. But all I can say is he's a tough little bugger."

Childers described his son as "a little country boy," who had cut wood and played in the snow with his dad.

"But you can't train a kid to do what he did in the woods for three days," he said.

The boy was lying on the ground of a hollow near a creek bottom Wednesday afternoon when a volunteer searcher spied his bare bottom.

"Hey, bud!" called out Donnie Halpin, a 57-year-old construction worker from nearby Fredericktown, who wasn't sure whether the grimy figure was even alive.

But Joshua sat right up and grinned at his rescuer.

"You ready to go home?" Halpin asked.

"Yeah," said Joshua.

The boy was wet and only wearing a T-shirt and one tennis shoe. Halpin called 911, then wrapped the child in his shirt, scooped him up and carried him about a half-mile to a house.

"He hung on to me pretty tight," said Halpin, who didn't have any water for the child but gave him some candy. "Outside of a few scratches, he was in really good shape."

Halpin took him to the home of Mary Jane Savage, about three miles from the Childers' home and yelled from outside that he had found the boy alive.

Savage, 60, told The Associated Press that she placed Joshua on her kitchen table and asked him, 'My goodness, Joshua, what have you been doing?" she said.

"I took a hike," he told her.

"I said, 'You sure did,"' Savage said.

She put the boy in the sink and washed the mud and dirt off of his legs, then wrapped him in a throw blanket and asked him if he wanted anything to eat. All he wanted was milk.

Joshua had slipped out of his family's mobile home near Arcadia in rural southeast Missouri around 11:30 a.m. Monday, while his father slept and his mother talked on the phone.

Terry Schulte, the boy's grandmother, told KSDK-TV that Joshua told her he was on his way to visit her. She lives about five miles from his home, and he was found covered in ticks about a half-mile away. Somewhere along the way he lost his pull-up diaper and one of his sneakers, which searchers found near a pond Monday.

Halpin spotted Joshua around 4 p.m. Wednesday while walking along an all-terrain vehicle trail about three miles from the boy's home, after first noticing two dogs sniffing at something.

"I'm going to put him up for the Grizzly Adams Award, send him bear-hunting with a stick," his overjoyed father, Adam Childers, told reporters, marveling at his son's survival skills.

"It's indescribable how grateful we are," Childers said. "I mean, you doubt if God's actually with you for awhile, and then something like this happens, and you know he's there."

Madison County Sheriff David Lewis said searchers had been growing increasingly pessimistic about their chances of finding Joshua alive. He figured three days was about the limit for the boy's survival in the wild without food and water.

"It's a miracle," Lewis said. "I'm so happy, you can't believe it."

Hundreds of volunteers from as far away as St. Louis, 100 miles to the northeast, came to help in the search. So did professional search and rescue crews from dozens of agencies. The Missouri State Highway Patrol brought in planes. The state Water Patrol brought in divers and sonar. Dozens of dogs, horses, ATVs and even donkeys scattered in the miles around the tiny home that sits along the wild, rocky terrain of the Mark Twain National Forest.

The area is home to bears, mountain lions and snakes. Heavy rain Tuesday night and Wednesday morning swelled creeks in the area.

Doctors have told him that his son is a little dehydrated but otherwise fine, Childers said. The child was evaluated and listed in fair condition, first at Iron County Hospital and later at Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Crystal City, where he was transferred because it has a larger pediatric unit.

The boy has been asking for milk and hot dogs since his rescue, Childers said.