Talk about a life or death situation.
According to Kiro 7, Washington’s Bart Brown saw his life flash before his eyes after coming face to face with a mountain lion at the in Port Angeles, Washington.
Brown was walking back from his favorite fishing hole when he noticed the mountain lion looking back at him.
He recalled the terrifying run-in:
“She’s sitting on the edge of the trail. And when I looked over, I stopped her dead in her tracks, like she slid over a little bit, you know?”
He was at the start of the three-hour hike out of the park when he met the cougar, and it was his first run-in with a cougar in years of fishing at Lake Angeles.
He continued:
“And we had a stare down. And… I gripped my flashlight really tight, you know, I’m like, I’m prepared to die. She is, she was about to attack me. I’m serious. I’m dead serious.”
Armed with just a flashlight, Brown said he had no other choice but to charge it:
“It was going to be me or her, right? And so I charged her. I charged the cougar. Yes, I did.
It’s one of them life or death situations and I felt like I was going to die. I’m going to fight this cougar and I know I’m not going to win, you know. But I’m going to try.”
In the video, you can hear him getting psyched up to charge the mountain lion:
“You want some… come on, let’s f*cking do it.”
Jason Knight, the owner of the Alderleaf Wilderness College and wildlife expert weighed in on Brown’s encounter:
“I’m not surprised, because there are so many humans and we are always hiking into their territory, their habitat all the time.
They usually see us. We don’t see them. But if there’s a time that you do see one, if it’s not running the other direction to get away from you, the appropriate response is to be aggressive towards it.”
Brown said he played a game of chicken with the mountain lion, and sure enough, he won:
“She gets down and she looks at me and I look at her, too, we’re in it, we’re in a death stare. I’m like, here we go. I muster the courage. I charged her again.
We played chicken and I won. And she took off down the mountain.”
Talk about a close call.
Needless to say, I’m sure Brown is counting his blessings.
