Mom Fights Off a Cougar Trying to Eat Her Son
Source – A Canadian woman said her “mom instinct” took over last week when she fought off a cougar that mauled her 7-year-old son in their backyard.
Chelsea Lockhart was doing household chores on Friday afternoon when she heard her son, Zachery, scuffling with something outside their home in Lake Cowichan, Vancouver Island. She said she rushed to the backyard to look for the source of the commotion and found the boy fighting for his life.
“I ran downstairs and I ran toward his voice. I turned the corner and saw this animal on my child,” she told CTV on Tuesday. “He was on the ground and the cougar was attached to his arm. I had a mom instinct, right? I just leaped on it and I tried to pry its mouth open.”
She said she doesn’t know where she gained the strength, but she fish-hooked the juvenile cougar by the mouth and managed to pry him off. …
She said it’s a miracle that Zachery survived the attack with only a gash on his head and a few injuries cuts his neck and arms.
“I knew that in my own power and in my own strength I wasn’t going to be able to pry its mouth open, so I started praying in tongues. I’m just crying out to the Lord,” she said. “Three sentences into me praying, it released and it ran away.”
Who does something like this? This has to be the most reckless, careless and damned near suicidal thing I’ve ever heard of. This cougar had to be the dumbest cat ever born because every animal with an instinct for self-preservation knows you don’t attack a creature when its mother is around. It’s hardwired into the DNA of every mother in the Animal Kingdom to give her life if necessary to protect her young. It doesn’t matter how desperately hungry you are or how delicious and vulnerable the prey looks. You only attack a cub with the mother in the area if you have a death wish.
And I know I’m supposed to be saying “parent,” but I know better. Any mother will gladly sacrifice herself for her young. With fathers, it’s more of a gray area.
I raised two sons. And if you ask me would I have fought off a cougar attacking one of them when he was 7, I’ll reverse ask you what the circumstances are. Did he just bring home a drawing he made in school with us as stick figures and “I Love You” across the top? OK, sure. Did he just bring home a report card with a bunch of D’s because he’s not doing his assignments and a note from the teacher that is all euphemisms for “Your kid never shuts up?” Ehhhh … not so much. If he’s doing well in his sports and running out every ground ball, then fine. But if he’s halfassing it and fooling around on the bench and pissing his coach off? Then my motivation is more to just yell out the back door the old dad fallback, “Just come in the house. That cougar is more afraid of you than you are of him.”
Or, let’s say it’s a Sunday and I’m two beers deep into my afternoon, on the couch watching golf. I think that’s a “Honey? Can you see what your son is yelling about out back?” situation. Or what if I’m in the bathroom, getting the only quite time a father gets? At that point I think a cougar attack becomes more of what we like to call “a teachable moment.” A chance for him to learn how to let his fight or flight kick in and defend himself. I mean, a dad can’t fight all his kid’s battles for him. Some day he’s going to have to fend off violent encounters with vicious Apex predators on his own and not interrupt dad’s bathroom time.
So lucky for Zachary his mom and her Lord and Savior were there to fight this fight. And if the cougar was smart, next time it’d wait until dad was in charge. Then at least it’d have a fighting chance.