Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Mountain Lion Attack - Shannon Parker and the Desperate Cougar

Episode Date: November 15, 2020

A young woman was on an innocent hike, but a mountain lion had other plans. Wes, unexpectedly, digs into the relationship drama aspect of this story, while Jeff outs himself as a prolific mountain lion spotter.  ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Tooth and Claw, everyone. Today's episode is about Mountain Lions, also known as Cougars, Pumas, and apparently like 400 other names. Wes Larson, unsurprisingly, has them all memorized. I saw him flipping through his big cats of North America flashcards earlier. He spends his time like this, of course, because he is an expert wildlife biologist, and has an unquenchable thirst for learning new things about animals, such as the unique way mountain lions use their teeth to kill their prey.

There's a little tease for you about what's coming later on. on in the podcast. Anyways, in this episode, Wes walks us through the real story of a short hiking trip gone terribly wrong, involving a young lady and a desperate mountain lion. Also, real quick before we get into all that, if you haven't already, help us out by rating this podcast and subscribing to it. We've seen that a lot of you already have, and we really appreciate it, and have seen some really good growth because of it already. And that's all you guys. Thank you so much. All right, let's get to this episode's story. All right, we're back again. What's up? What's new?

Well, I think it's been an interesting week for all three of us. Jeff gave me and Mike a special present this week. Jeff, what was it that you gave us? You gave you guys COVID? Yeah, you gave us COVID. Thanks, Jeff. You're welcome. Yeah, so we've all been dealing with that.

Luckily, me and Mike's symptoms have been pretty minor compared to how bad they can be. And Jeff, you got it a little worse, right? Yeah, four days of fever, sore. kidneys the last four days. Yeah, and we've all been isolating and it ruined a little trip of mine, but that's okay. Speaking of COVID, what are we talking about this? We're talking about mountain lions this week. Honestly, ever since we started the podcast, people have been asking for us to do a mountain line episode. And then it kind of hit full fever till last month when there's this big viral video that all of us have seen of this kid in Utah who was out.

trail running and he was chased by a mountain line for six minutes. And the headline to that video was I was stalked by a cougar for six minutes. And I actually wanted to talk about that video before we talk about our story because we're going to be talking about an actual cougar attack, but that video wasn't actually an attack. It wasn't a cougar attacking a person. And if you haven't seen it, it's worth looking up, just look up Provo, Utah, stocked by Cougar. Cougar. Yeah, the kid's name is Kyle Burgess. And anyway, it's a, yeah, it's a fascinating video. It's really interesting. But essentially what happened is this guy's out trail running. He sees in the trail these two cats that he, I think he thought there were bobcats, but they were actually

Cougar Cubs, approaches them and then realize their cougars starts backing up and the mom comes out in the trail and starts to chase him. And for six minutes, he's backing up slowly and kind of yelling these different things of the cougar and she's following them way up the trail and she's lunging at him and hissing at him and doing all these different displays and someone seeing that video for the first time and not knowing much about mountain lion cougar behavior is going to think oh yeah he's being attacked by this animal but really what's happening there is that he intruded on her and her cubs and she's escorting him away from the cubs that's what that behavior's called is escorting she's just using all of her displays and everything to pull

push him as far away from those cubs as possible. And I think she just kind of got fixated on him for longer than normal. And they do that too. They sometimes just get fixated on something they're doing and they'll do it for longer than they have to. But you see in that video, she's like bluff charging, her ears are back and she keeps turning her body all the way to the side to show him how big she is and to be as like threatening as possible to him. And that's not something a cougar does if it's hunting you. If a cougar is hunting you, you don't hear it until it's jumping out of the bushes at you. It's not like it's chasing you and following you and making all these huge displays. That's something it does when it's just trying to scare you off and let you know that it's a cougar.

And that's 100% what it was doing to this kid. Had it been hunting him, it would have chased him and grabbed him. So in a situation like that, he pretty much did the right thing, which is just backing away, yelling, doing whatever you can to convince it that you're not worth the trouble, but just getting out of the area. And that's what he did. And finally, he bends down to throw a rock at the lion and it takes off. So that wasn't an attack. That was very much a mom, just being a mom, and letting him know that he got too close

to her cubs. So going into it a little more, what could have he done that would have made it like this situation worse? So the main thing he, I mean, the main thing he did to make a lot of the case. it worse in the first place was approach those cubs. And had he gotten closer to them, that would have been even worse. He luckily didn't get close enough to I think where she thought she had to actually make contact with him. But something that potentially could have made it worse is him turning and running because then she might think, oh, maybe that is prey and I am going to kill it,

you know? And then, I mean, some people say that like, you know, if you turn your head and you're not looking at the mountain lion or, you know, if you like break that eye contact, she might take the opportunity to actually run up and get you. But I think in this situation where she was just trying to get rid of him, that went to matter too much. Really, the mistakes he made were approaching the kittens and not having something to deter either a mountain lion or a bear, which was bear spray or a gun or something.

Right. Or like a scratch post to distract it. Which, to be fair, in Utah, we never really carry that with us. We don't, because we're not that afraid of bears. in Utah and honestly if I'm trail running I yeah but if you are worried about mountain lions bear spray works great on him and we're going to talk more about that anyway I wanted to bring that up because it is something people have talked about a lot if you do have that where like a cougar's charging at you and and you know that she's just trying to push you away do what that guy did back away the thing he

could have done better is be a little bit louder like really yelling at the cat and screaming and stuff and then throwing rocks and stuff is always a good idea too how about a laser pointer. A laser pointer would have probably bothered it. It would have annoyed it slightly. You think it would have chased it? I don't, it might have. You mean like a cat?

Possibly. Yeah, laser pointer might have worked. Okay, so one thing to consider, and I've already kind of done this, these cats have a lot of names. So Cougar, Mountain Line, Puma, Catamount, Panther, those are all names for the same cat. Panther can be a name for a lot of different cats. but usually around this part of the country where we are,

we're in Utah right now, Cougar and Mountain Line are the two that we tend to use the most. I'm probably going to use both of them throughout this thing. Just remember, it's the same cat. Puma Concolor is their scientific name. I googled famous cougars for our pop culture category. Add some good stuff, I don't know if how relevant will be that. Cool.

Well, you could use those results if you want. All right, so that's kind of the opening. I'm going to go into our actual story, which is much more graphic, much more kind of terrible. This is a bad one. This is actually one that my mom, mine and Jeff's mom recommended that she had read in, I think, Reader's Digest forever ago. She loves it. Shout out to Mom. Yeah, shout out to Mom.

Shout out to Reader's Digest. She loves animal attack stories, and she just gets horrified. by them, like totally terrified it and doesn't want to do things anymore because of them, but she can't stop reading them. And so she sent me a few that were ones that stood out to her. And I read this one and I was like, okay, that's a pretty good mountain lion attack. So I wanted to share it. So are we ready?

Yeah. Okay. So we're talking about Shannon Parker, who was attacked in June 2004 in Sequoia National Forest when she was 27 years old. So a little backstory. Shannon is very much a self-proclaimed city girl. She doesn't like going outside. She would rather spend time in the gym, then go hiking.

She's really into her looks and kind of working out and being like kind of just like a pretty city girl. Like that's very much her identity. In fact, she's also afraid of the ocean and she doesn't even like swimming in the ocean because she's so afraid of sharks. So it sucks like these are the people that always end up getting attacked. Like the one time they go to a national park. I was about to say like when it's some outdoorsman that has. has spent so much time in the woods. And they end up getting attacked.

It's like, yeah, you're playing that law of averages. But when it's some city girl that gets talked into going somewhere. Yeah. Which is very much what happens. Her boyfriend, Matias, who they've been dating for like 18 months, he talks her into going on this trip with him and his friends, Jason and Ben. And they're going camping and Matias just talks her into coming out for like a day. And he really has to beg her to come.

and Matias is very outdoorsy. He likes hiking. He's hiked all over the world. But he has to beg Shannon to come on this hike. So this hike is on the river trail in Sequoia National Forest. It's a well-used trail. It winds along the Kern River, and it winds through all these stands of cedar and oak and pine. When Shannon's hiking, she's wearing a tank top, bikini bottom, and tennis shoes. It's very casual. It's just like a couple miles. And she hikes in to join the group that's already at their campsite, the three boys, Matias, Ben, and Jason. They're near the river, and they spend the day like fishing and playing in the water and having a really idyllic summer day. So around 6 p.m. that night, her boyfriend's friend Jason from college, he had planned this little hike a little

further up the mountain, and they start up on the trail. Now it's starting to get dark in the canyon, and about a mile into the hike, Shannon gets tired, and she decides that she wants to turn back and go back to her car and leave. Her car's less than a mile away. And as she leaves, Matias asks if she can look for his sunglasses that he had dropped somewhere along on their hike. So she agrees. She says she'll look for his sunglasses. And even though there's lots of other people around like kayaking and hiking on the other side of the mountain, she's the only one on this specific trail, or at least the only human on that specific trail. So as she's walking back to her car, she's looking down and she's scanning the ground looking for these sunglasses when she looks

up to see a mountain lion right off the side of the trail in the bushes, crouched down in that classic kind of cat pounce position, and right as she makes eye contact with it, it lunges out. It locks its jaw onto the side of her head and pulls her to the ground. A little bit to learn about mountain lions. The thing here is that this cat has probably been stalking her for a while and she just didn't realize it. They tend to stalk their prey until they can get within 50 feet, and then they launch their attack.

They're masters of stealth. Their coloration is perfect for most of the habitats they live in, and they're just really good at creeping around and not being heard or seen. When they finally do attack, they launch forward on powerful leg muscles. They have the longest legs for their size of any cat, and they use their sharp claws to control the prey. They usually grab onto the shoulders in the neck with their claws. And one interesting thing about those claws is we think about retractable claws

as the cat kind of making a decision to push its claws. claws out, but what actually is happening is when it extends its forearms, that just happens on its own. So that's a passive thing. When it puts its forearms out to grab something, those claws just come out. Is that with all cats? I don't know, but I know that's the case with Mountain Lions. So those are just coming out when it extends its arms. So while most people think they have this idea of cats killing animals by grabbing onto their windpipe and crushing the windpipe, what Mountain Lions actually do, and this is kind of scary, they bite the back of your neck and they, they have such a strong bite that their canines go into your vertebrae,

and they separate your neck vertebrae with their canines and just break your neck. So that's how they kill deer and elk and all the stuff that they kill. So when you see a mountain lion attack something, it actually goes for the back of the neck. And sometimes on bigger prey, they kind of like throw themselves backwards as they're biting, and it just sinks those teeth into the vertebrae and split it apart. So that's their main kind of strategy,

which is pretty crazy and pretty brutal. and it only takes them seconds to kill whatever they're trying to kill. So they're really efficient predators, and they actually successfully kill their prey in about 80% of their attacks, which for a predator is a really high percentage. Yeah. Okay, so luckily for Shannon, this cat that she met up with, was young and experienced and pretty desperate.

So rather than locking onto the back of her neck, it actually clamps onto the side of her face. So it's luckily, but not lucky. It's not lucky, but it's luckier. So its teeth rip into her tear duct, and then the other tooth crushes her right eye, tears away half of her nose, and she actually didn't feel any pain. The adrenaline at this point is just coursing through her body, and she repeatedly is punching and kicking the animals that's on top of her,

and she even puts her right hand way deep down inside of its mouth to try and kind of push it off of her. Good job, Shannon. Yeah. But it refuses to release its grip, and they're kind of struggling, and then they tumble off the trail and fall about 20 feet off the tree. trail. And at this point, she's on her hands and knees, and it still has its face just completely locked on to hers, and it's holding her head on the ground. It stayed last shot as they like fell? Yeah, it didn't let go. So it's, yeah, jaws are completely clamped around her face, and it's holding her

head to the ground. So the cat tries to drag her into the bush, and she wedges her foot around a boulder in a tree, so it can't pull her into the bush, and they're kind of having this weird little stalemate where she said she could like hear it panting and just kind of like, trying to figure out what it was going to do next. So she starts screaming for help at that point. So Matias and his friends, they decided to abandon the rest of the hike and catch up with Shannon,

and they start to hear her screaming as they're hiking back. He thought she'd probably fallen off the trail and gotten hurt. So he runs up and sees her 20 feet down off the trail, grappling with an animal. And Matias is from Hawaii, and he doesn't really know what animals look like, and he assumed it was a badger somehow. But when he runs down to the hill to help her, he realizes what's actually happening.

And it's a mountain lion. And at that point, Shannon screams to him, please get it off me. And he answers, I will, babe. And then, like, part of me at that point was really hoping he asked if she found his sunglasses. Which, Matias, you really missed a great opportunity for a joke right there. This summer, serve up the cookout classics, craft mayo, and dressing. green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian. Serve smooth, craveably creamy potato salads with mayo.

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Bring your AT&T or T Mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal on the best network. A better deal. No surprises. That's Verizon. Best network based on root metrics, best overall mobile network from the U.S. second half 2025. All rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person regimen me the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. Okay, so he wraps his arms around her waist and starts to pull on her really hard. But rather than release her, the cougar, the cougar, and starts ripping into her face. So he goes for her, not the cougain. Yeah. So he tried to kick it and stuff, but they're on a really steep slope so they couldn't really kick. And so he pulls on her hoping that the cougar would let go over

and maybe like lunge at him or something. And it just pulls harder on her face and it's like excruciating for her at this point. So she screams at him to stop because it's like ripping her face apart. So then he decides, you know, that's not a good, a good plan. And the other two guys, Ben and Jason, show up and Matthias throws his keys to Ben and yells to him to go get help. And then then Ben takes off running and Jason goes to help. And this was a really, to take a quick break, that's a really bad idea. Because they're not close enough to where if Ben went and found someone else, it would make that much of a difference.

And with an animal like a mountain lion, having a third person there or a fourth person there would make a huge difference. Yeah, they had the help and he sent them away. Yeah, exactly, exactly. They had a full human man, you know, like a six-foot dude that could have helped. and they sent him away. So Jason stays to help. He goes down to get the cat off of Shannon,

and he actually has a knife that has a three-inch blade. So he hands it to Matthias, and Matias starts stabbing this cat in its shoulder and on its back, stabs it three times, and then drops the knife, which at this point I'm like, is Mattias trying to kill his girlfriend? Yeah. Like...

Just makes it mad. Yeah. He stabs it and then drops in the knife, like, gets lost somehow. Oh, my gosh. So first he's, like, pulling her apart, and then he, like, stabs it. drops it. And I had been reading about how they're having all these relationship problems. So it's kind of like, oh, man. Anyway, Jason, so Jason gets in there. He tries to kick the lion, but again,

they're on a slope and he can't really get a good purchase. So he starts picking up these football-sized rocks and throwing it at him. And he's hitting this lion in the back and on the side, and it's just refusing to let go. And so finally he hits it with a fourth rock. It lets go. It kind of stumbles off and they grab Shannon both him and Matias and pull her up to start pulling it up to the trail and then the craziest thing is this cat comes back and attacks her again so as they're pulling her way like two adult men as they're pulling her way it jumps back on her grabs her thigh with its teeth and its claws and starts ripping at her again so at this point Matias yells hit its head and Jason picks up a big rock and starts just crushing it down on its head

And before that, the way that the cat was, he couldn't really throw a rock without potentially hitting Shannon. Right. But I guess at this point, he can do it because it's just latched onto her leg. So he crushes this rock down on its head and hits it hard enough that it finally releases her and goes off into the brush. So they pull her back up onto the trail and they start to take a look at her injuries. And the whole entire right side of her body is raked with claw marks.

She's covered in saliva. As I mentioned before, her right eye has been completely. completely crushed. The upper and lower eyelids have been completely peeled off on that side. Her left tear duck has been punctured by one of the canines and there's just a gaping hole there. And one of the doctors actually pulled a piece of cougar tooth out of her nasal bone. Oh, wow. Yeah. Her top lip has been completely split in half, torn into two pieces. And then she has puncture wounds going up the side of her face. A chunk of her thigh is missing.

And they can see all the way down to the bone, kind of like our shark attack guy last week. they can see all the way through the muscle and everything down to her bone. Or me at the gas station. Or you at the gas station. Yeah. So somehow Shannon still has it in her to hike. They said it took them 40 minutes to get to the car. Where Ben and a park ranger are waiting, there's chill in there waiting for him, I guess.

And then the crazy thing to me is there isn't an ambulance they're waiting. They actually called the ambulance at that point. So it takes the ambulance another 45 minutes to show up. And during that time, she starts going into shock. and the pain really starts setting in too. So Jason ends up leading the rangers back to the cougar, and they find it, and it's pretty dazed and stunned and everything. It's been stabbed.

It's been hit by all these rocks, and they kill it. And it turns out this was a 50-pound cougar when it should be about double that size. It's really lean, really skinny. There had been a wildfire nearby, and they think that maybe it had been pushed out of its territory and was just really desperate. Yeah. So we'll talk a little bit more why they do this kind of thing, but this one was probably just starving and decided that it had to kill something.

Right. So Shannon ends up getting two different helicopter rides until she gets to UCLA Medical Center where a team of surgeons and plastic surgeons start to put her back together. She has like, I can't remember if it was six or ten total plastic surgery operations, but it's quite a bit. So was her life ever in danger? Was this? Yeah, it was.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Had they not shown up and rescued her, she probably would have died. Okay. Just because that, I mean, it was a smaller cat, but she was really small too. Sure. And it just was not giving up. But like after the attack, did she almost die? Oh, after the attack, I don't think so.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. She hadn't hit any arteries. It hadn't done any damage that was going to kill her. But she's pretty messed up and like to the level where they needed to fix her right away. And then, you know, you can always go into shock or something like. that there's other things that can kill you aside from losing blood or having a organ hit or something right

she starts to get piece back together uh she had to pay 26,000 dollars for the helicopter and ambulance rides which sucks again our medical system is totally broken and then a big part of her whole recovery story too is just how badly her wounds messed with her self-confidence because she was a really pretty girl and she really had put a lot into that kind of being her identity was her look and everything and you know whether or not that's a good or bad thing you can decide on your own but that was a big part of her identity was being pretty yeah and it just completely tore her face apart she lost her eye she has a fake eye um and her eyelid like had to be all you know reconstructed and her face had to be reconstructed so she had a really hard recovery yeah that sucks yeah when she got

home her brother like covered all the mirrors in their house so that she couldn't see a reflection because it was that bad. And when she did see it, she would just completely break down. And then she also had a lot of trauma. If anyone ever approached her and she didn't know they were there, she freaked out and had relapses and everything. Some of our people, again, like our great white attack survivor last week, really just did a good job of kind of bouncing back.

Right. This is a person that had a hard time with that. And I don't blame her because she had her face completely destroyed by a mountain lion. And she doesn't like the outdoors. outdoors. So if you don't like the outdoors and you're already afraid of them and then you finally go out into them and your worst nightmare happens, you're going to be scared for a while. Yeah. She's doing a lot better now. Her and Matias broke up three months later, which again, from reading the story, it sounded like they were kind of already on the rocks. And then he was probably

just like, I can't break up with her right after. Right. I got to wait at least three months. Well, also, and granted, I don't know all the details. But it's, seems kind of like he went 0 for 5 on big decisions to make while helping her out. Yeah. I mean, he went and he did. He was doing the rock bashing and all that, but. Yeah, that was Jason actually. Oh, well, but she should hook up with Jason.

She still is friends with Jason to this day. That's my guy. I will say, she cried at Smetius was saving her life. Yeah. Now, I'm joking. Yeah. And there are a couple of. They both did.

Her and Jason, or him and Jason for sure did. Sure. But I did think it was kind of funny. Like, I put myself in his mind where if you're ready to break up with someone and then they have their face ripped off by a mountain lion, you can't break up with them. So get her to break up with you. Yeah. Anyway, they didn't last. But she is in a much better place now.

And she actually, she kind of talked about having to switch from her beauty to finding her to like learning other hobbies and doing other things has made her life richer. And I thought that was a really cool outcome and a neat way to look at it in the background. And she still feels like she has really bad luck. And she did. Yeah. But she managed to have a silver lining to her whole attack story. That's great. Yeah.

I like Shannon in this story. Yeah, me too. Again, let's just talk really quick then about different types of cougar attacks on people. So we already talked about a cat that's just trying to push you away because she's defending her cubs or something like that or maybe a kill. This one was very much a predatory attack, but again, it's not a typical predatory attack because generally if a cougar's in good shape and it is stalking you and you notice it or if you try and fight it off as hard as they did, it's not going to stick around that long. And that's because of all the animals that we've talked about at this point, these are the animal that are so, they're so lean. They need every single muscle that they have to do what they do, which is kill deer and elk and stuff. that if they break something or if they get hurt or whatever, it's a death sentence for them.

They can't survive a torn muscle or a broken leg or anything like that. So if something fights back hard enough at them, they kind of just think, okay, I've had enough. I can't, you know, this is too much of a fight. I'm going to go kill something else. That's the typical kind of response. And so usually if you fight back hard enough, they'll stop. In this case, this line was desperate. it was way underweight. It probably just was starving and needed to kill something. And once it had

something in its mouth, it wasn't going to let go. So this was pretty atypical. This isn't a normal thing. Usually if you hit a cougar hard enough or if you have multiple people there kicking it or doing whatever, it's going to stop its attack and run off. All right. So a few facts about cougars. They're the fourth largest cat species worldwide. So can you guys name the three that are larger them in order? Yeah. Siamese. Give me largest cat.

Wait, I can name more than that. Well, you don't need to name like subspecies. Just name. Lions. Okay, so you got lions? Lions. Tigers. Tigers.

Tigers. Tigers. Tigers. Tigers. Lions. Lions. Then jaguars. Then leopards.

No. These are fourth. These are bigger than a leopard? They're bigger than leopards. Which is honestly something I didn't know either until I did the research for this one. I would have put leopards over them. The average weight of a mountain lion is higher. than the average weight of a leopard.

When I've seen adult mountain lions and like when you see a big one, it's weird because you're just like, I'm in Montana. I'm looking at a lion right now. They're big. Yeah. Yeah. Surprisingly big. The biggest leopard, I think, tops out around like 200 pounds and 276 pounds is the largest ever

recorded mountain lion. Whoa. That's pretty big. Yeah. And I think that one's like a little bit of a debate and the one below that was like 230. So they get pretty big. Average is more like 100 to 200 pounds. So one thing that I read that's just like bonkers to me

is that they can leap 45 feet horizontally and 15 feet vertical. What? And that vertical leap is some places said even up to 20 feet is from standing still. Like they can just be standing there and then just jump 15 to 20 feet up in the air. That's insane. The 45 foot one, you think about that. That's the length of like a bus. Yeah.

That's a long. long way. So they're really, they're one of the more athletic cats. They have eyes and ears that are their main tools for hunting. A lot of the animals we've talked about, scent is their main thing. With these guys, it's more sight and hearing. They still have great sense of smell, but those are their main senses that they use. They have really great binocular vision. Their eyes are forward facings. They have overlapping areas, which gives them binocular vision. And they can see well in both dark and daylight. They're typically crepuscular, which means they're going to be out in the dusk and dawn, and then they're also nocturnal. They're the most widespread of any large terrestrial mammal

in the western hemisphere. You can find them anywhere from the Yukon all the way down to Patagonia. In the United States, they're mostly found west of the Rockies and west of the Mississippi. They used to exist throughout the east, but not so much anymore. They are in Florida. That's their one stronghold in the east and then occasionally you do have cats that leave the west and kind of start to migrate in the east and i didn't realize how far one of these mountain lines will travel but there was one recently that wandered from south dakota to minnesota wisconsin michigan new york connecticut and then finally was hit by a car in connecticut so it went all the way from south dakota to connect how did was it tagged i assume it was tagged yeah yeah yeah pretty crazy

They can wander pretty far. And it's usually the males that do that kind of wandering. As far as attacks, there's been 125 attacks on humans recorded attacks in the last hundred years. 27 of those were fatal. And a lot of those fatal attacks were on children. Okay. So do you guys have any questions about cougar biology?

I think Mike's had encounters with cougars over 250 pounds, haven't you? Are we going there right now? No, I don't have any question. Let's talk then a little bit more about why Cougars attack. So one of the things that happens is a group of people that are attacked more often than not, or more often than normal, are trail runners and bikers. And that's because these are people that are running past a Cougar at a high rate of speed, and the animal doesn't really have time to sit there and decide whether or not it's going to make an attack or not.

so they make those decisions a lot quicker and a lot of times just that fast motion just it makes it decide that it wants to attack it thinks it's like a deer or something that's running away quickly and they'll attack those people kids are attacked at a higher level just because they they're easier prey it's you know it's much less of a threat to the animal or then sometimes they attack like this one in our story where they're just desperate for a meal for whatever reason didn't didn't you go to high school and some kid in your high school like saved a kid from getting attacked by a mountain line. Yeah, there's this kid in Missoula who was skiing. He was a ski instructor in high school and a cougar run out, ran out and like jumped on one of the kids that he was teaching. And he like

went over to it and started kicking at it with skis or something. And the cougar ran off. And then he was on like lettermen and stuff. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop. So it's always easy to save big every day with savings and rewards. Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years. Savings may vary by state.

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Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visitpriceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. So, if you are attacked by a coup, And I want to mention something. Someone wrote in and said that they wish we'd spend more time on kind of what to do. And something that I wanted to make clear is that a lot of times when you learn about what to do in animal attacks, there's so much information out there and you hear

so many different things that when you actually find yourself in this situation, you start running through all these different things in your mind. And some of them aren't proven to actually be effective. And so I'm a big fan of really simplistic explanation. for these kind of things and only telling people what's been proven to work because then instead of thinking like okay how am I supposed to talk to this animal what am I supposed to do you know you just know the things that do work and so we're not we don't spend a ton of time on this on purpose because we don't want people to get confused when you actually have the experience in a cougar attack if you have a cougar coming at you the main things to do are just make yourself look big yell as loud as you can

make as much sound as you can throw rocks throw sticks throw anything you have and just really let the animal know that you're not going to be an easy fight that's really all you can do don't ever run don't ever take your eyes off the cat just make sure you're staring at it but just do as everything you can to be as scary as possible now if you actually are attacked by it you just got to fight back with everything you've got that's really all you can do and this is again this is probably the only we've talked about so far where you actually have a fighting chance of stopping the attack if you fight really hard. How to avoid a cougar attack? You can hike, run, or ride with bearspray. Bear spray works great on Mountain Lions. Like every other single animal we've talked about,

if you go out in groups, you have a much lower chance of being attacked, and then avoiding dawn and dusk, and then just paying attention for signs of cougars. So if you're out trail running by yourself late at night, that's when you're kind of asking for it. Questions. How much does bear spray cost? A can of bear spray will run you about $40 to $50. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

And it's only going to work once. What? You're going to spray it and then you're going to, after you're done spraying it, you're going to throw it out. You've used bear spray, right? $26,000 for her to get helicopter down. I mean, that's not a private helicopter ride. That's not a bad price to pay.

I don't think she enjoyed. And she got her face ripped off. Yeah, I guess with one eye missing, she probably didn't enjoy the view all that much. Sounds like a good stocking stuffer. If any of you guys have any outdoorsy types in your life, you want to get a present for? It is. It's a great present. We should get a sponsor.

Yeah. Pretty soon I might actually be developing my own bear spray. Oh, yeah, we'll sponsor. What flavor? One thing about it, too. is if you do buy bear spray, you don't want to leave it in the packaging, because that packaging is really hard to open. Sometimes people leave it in there so they can return it.

Take it out of its packaging, have it on your hip, and do a practice. Like don't actually spray it, but practice taking the safety off and stuff so that you know how to use it. Like especially with this story, seems like you'd have to be pretty quick. Yeah, she only had seconds to react. But had she had it with her, she probably could have pulled it out and still sprayed it. You know, she would have got herself too. Yeah. But it probably would have stopped the attack.

Have you practiced a lot? I practiced a little, yeah. Is it kind of like the Robert De Niro scene in a taxi? Taxi driver. Taxi driver. Whip it out in the mirror. It's say, do you feel lucky, punk? Yeah.

I haven't done that. That's Dirty Harry. It makes you feel cool. Oh, yeah, right. Dirty Harry's the, do you feel like? Wait, what's the same taxi driver? Are you talking to me? Yeah, you're talking to me?

That's right. Yeah. Okay. That's what I would do if I was confronted with a mountain line. Yeah. Talk. That's what you should do. All right.

So we've talked about what you do if you're being attacked, how to avoid an attack. I think we got through it all. We talked about the difference between a mountain line just trying to scare someone away and one actually stalking someone. And again, the main thing there is you don't see it if it's stalking you. If it's running at you and doing all the bluff charges and stuff, it's not trying to attack you. So I think we're ready for our categories. So, yeah, let's launch into them. All right.

I guess, yeah, let's do our favorite mountain lion from pop culture or from anything. Cool. Yeah. You want to go first, Jeff? Yeah, I can start. So, for me, it came down to three. Wow. How did you narrowed it down this time?

At BYU, our mascot was a cougar, yeah, Cosmo. He has a cool YouTube video where he dunked from behind the three point line. They made like a human pyramid and he dunks. And then, so it came down to the mountain lion in where the, the Redford grows and the mountain lion in Homeward Bound. I liked both mountain lions, which is a tough take on the Redford grows since it kills one of his dogs. But I had to go with the Homeward Bound Mountain Lion.

That's a good pick. Yeah. Does it jump in the water? The cat does, I think. I feel like the mountain line does too, but I can't remember it. Whatever they did to make that movie. Yeah. Especially with like the cat.

How they got the cat to act? just chucked it off the cliff. Yeah. It's an old Milo Notus strategy. Yeah, that Milo notice has some real skeletons. Yeah, it's tough. Mike, what's your favorite mountain line?

Yeah, so I actually couldn't think of any. I try not to do like searches on the internet. I try to think of my own. So I went with Sandra Bullock. Because the Cougar thing. I am going to go with the Cougar in the viral video from a month ago. Oh.

It was right in. front of us. It was cool and it just, I don't think, I, those kind of videos to me don't always affect me that much and that one I thought was so cool. Just how long he managed to film it and then it like coming at him and doing the lunges with its floppy paws. I don't know. I really liked that video and I thought that was a really beautiful animal. So I'm going to go with that one, if that one counts. Seems like mountain lions have a lot of untapped potential here. What do you mean? Just not a whole lot of fictional or cool. Like cartoons with them.

I was trying to think. I have a theory, but we'll get into that later. The Pink Panther is probably a mountain lion because it doesn't have spots or anything. Okay. So pink panther would count. So before we move on too, we saw a mountain lion a month ago. Yeah. And that was really cool.

I saw it like swimming in the river and just saw its like head in the water. It was crazy because we were driving to our favorite fishing. spot and we had seen mountain lines up there before but it had been a long time and i turned to jeff like jokingly and said do you think we'll see any mountain lines today and then we kind of went to a different topic for 20 seconds and then jeff points out the window he goes there's one and i was like huh he's like there's a mountain lion and i was like stop i thought he was joking and then i slammed on the brakes and get out of the car and a mountain line crossed the road right behind the car coming up from the river. And we got to watch it for probably five minutes. It was really cool.

It's such a treat to see him in the wild. And we're going to talk about where you can see him, but we can talk a little bit more about the ones we've seen. So should we move on to our next category? I'm ready. Okay. Let's do our Anaconda scale. So we brought this up in our last podcast. Essentially, we're ranking these people on a scale of characters from the movie Anaconda. Hopefully you guys have seen that movie. If you haven't, this isn't going to make a ton of sense. But for Shannon, I had a hard time thinking about it. She didn't really do anything that's stupid, but she also took some chances that you don't necessarily have to take

when you're out in the wilderness, hiking alone, not having anything to deter a predator. So I'm going to put her on the Owen Wilson side of things. She's very much an ice cube and that she really fought back really hard and did a good job with that. Yeah. But I'm going to say she's just a touch towards Owen for me because she took some chances that she didn't have to take.

I was thinking Ice Cube, because it just kind of seemed like Ice Cube on the whole Andaconda expedition didn't ever really want to be there. And that just seems like it matches pretty well with her. She didn't really do anything that I think is too stupid. She just wanted to find her boyfriend's sunglasses. I think wearing nothing but like a bikini bottom. That's pretty tough.

Walking alone, bikini. Yeah, I just, I feel we got to go more Owen than anybody else. Great. So we're leading Owen, but she's not a hard Owen. No. And honestly, when I read this story, I'm like, man, there's so many little trails that where you see tons of people and you don't, like, it doesn't even never cross your mind that you're going to run into something like that.

So I don't blame her, but we'll say she's like a slight Owen. Okay, so we'll move on to our cage match category, essentially just how this animal would stack up against our other animals we've talked about in a cage match. So really, there's not many of the other animals that it could beat. We're going to maybe subtract Great Whites from that equation just because, again, they're in a whole different environment. But there are some anecdotal observations of them killing smaller alligators in Florida. So it could kill a small alligator. But as far as grizzly bears, black bears, tigers, all have an advantage over a mountain lion. It'd be in like the lightweight division probably.

It would. Yeah. And you know what? They can run a black bear off of a kill if it's a big enough lion. But more often than not, black bears run them off of kills. Yeah. So they're not winning many of those fights. What about against me?

You're not going to win. No, they would get me. Again, this is our one animal that we've talked about so far that you could fight off. You could fight off, but if you're not going to kill it, you're not going to win. No. Okay. No. Okay.

So our next question is one of them, it's quickly becoming one of my favorites. Jeff and Mike, what would you guys do if you were attacked by a mountain lion? Jeff, why don't you go first? Yeah, so I was thinking I would grab a tree branch and pull it all the way back and then let go and just try to, to time it perfectly. Whip it in the face. Whip it. Oh, you've done that to me before and it really hurts.

Yeah, it's pretty effective. Okay. Or climb a tree. Okay. Mike? I would roll a ball of yarn off a cliff. Hopefully it would chase it off. Okay.

So again, both ideas aren't great. Jeff's branch whip, I guess, could work. Climbing a tree is a really bad idea. They're incredible climbers. They spend a lot of time in trees. I just figured to throw them off what they're used to. It might. Yeah, it might be a little confused, but it's still, if it wants to get you,

it's going to get you in the tree. And then the yarn is really interesting as well. Probably not going to work if it's trying to kill you, though. Maybe it would work with the one that was like trying to scare you off of her cubs. We talked about what you do. Just be as loud and as aggressive as you possibly can. throw rocks, throw sticks, do whatever you can to scare it. Okay, our next category, where can you see a mountain lion?

Of all the animals we've talked about so far, this is probably the one that's hardest to find. Just like there's not a great place in the world where you can just go to see mountains. Like reliably seen it. Right. Every other one we've talked about, there's at least once, I guess not Siberian tigers, but tigers in general, there are places you can see them. Mountain lions, you've really got to get lucky. Jeff's been incredibly lucky.

You've seen what? Eight mountain lions? Yeah, I think seven. Okay. I think I've seen six. I think you've seen eight last time we talked about it. Mike, have you ever seen a mountain line? I don't recall ever having seen one.

Yeah. It's fine. I don't need that experience. It's fine. I'll give you my first time I ever saw one. So I was hiking and I'm staring at my feet. It was with me, right? Wes is behind me.

and he goes, deer, so I don't even really bother looking up. And then he goes, mountain lion! And I look up in this giant mountain lion that just jumped out from like a boulder that was like 10 feet in front of us. Yeah, and ran up the trail from us like where we were heading to. And it's the biggest mountain line I've seen to this day. And so I had like my hunting knife with me and I pulled it out and was just holding that. But we didn't have anything else.

And it was a little spooky. And we were honestly like 10, 15 feet away, never heard a single noise. No, it was so quiet. Even when it ran up the trail. It was amazing. How accurate is the mountain part of the mountain lion name? So they, as I mentioned, they live everywhere from the Yukon all the way down to Patagonia. And so they live in a lot of different environments.

In the, our western mountain lions can live anywhere from up in the mountains to deserts to like to fields. There's lots of different places they can live. In South America, they live in the jungle. They live in the Amazon. They live in the mountains in South America. They live in the deserts of South America. They live in a really wide variety of habitat. Pretty much, they live in every single country, south of Mexico.

And so a lot of those countries have, you know, jungle and desert and all sorts of stuff. So they live in a lot of different habitats, and we call the mountain lions in North America. but in South America in these other places they call them Puma. Puma. I like that more. Puma's a cool name. Yeah. I like Mountain Lion a lot too, though.

Because they do look like a lion. They're the same color. I just wish it were true. Yeah. Puma is my least favorite name for it. You like what? I don't know. I was just going to say with a sea line, it's there in the sea, you know.

You know where to find them. You just go to the sea. Yeah, but mountain lines are in the mountains too. Yeah, but they're everywhere. I'm surprised I don't like walk outside and just have to have. have like an encounter with one right now. You could. It could happen. That's a crazy thing too is there's only two big cats in the world that live in super

cities or megacities. So like cities that are over a certain number of millions of people. Leopards in Mumbai, India, and then Mount Lions in Los Angeles. And I have a friend that lives in Beverly Hills that just recently sent me a video of a mountain lion in like her neighbor's yard walking through the middle of Beverly Hills. Cool. That's crazy. Yeah, they're in urban.

They can be a very urban. cat. They really are good at adapting to different habitats. So as far as seeing one, you got to get really lucky. There are places where it's a little easier. They're actually, now that I think about it, there is a place in Patagonia where they're very visible and they're starting to have little tours and stuff where you can go see them. So that's probably if you just have the goal to see a cougar, I guess down there, they're Pumas. Patagonia is probably the place where you could go and have your best possible chance of seeing one. Or your friend's house in Beverly Hills.

Exactly. Yeah. How are we messing things up for them? They're doing okay. The things that really affect mountain lions are habitat fragmentation. As we talked about, they're good at traveling. And if you break up all that habitat, they have to cross lots of roads and stuff. They get hit by cars.

That's a big problem for them. They are hunted in every state that they're found in the U.S. aside from, I believe, Florida, California. In Texas, they're a nuisance animal, so in Texas, you can just shoot them if you see them. You don't even need a tag. But they're doing okay. Numbers are okay. They used to exist in the eastern half of the United States, and they're functionally extinct

in the eastern half of the United States. But as far as throughout their entire range, they're doing okay. They're threatened mostly by habitat fragmentation, habitat loss, and hunting. Okay. Do we like this animal? I'll start. I love Mountain Lions. maybe my favorite big cat next to tigers.

For me, it's real close between tigers, jaguars, and mountain lions. Every time I've seen a mountain lion in the wild, I'm just buzzing for days afterward. I just think they're so elusive and so beautiful and just they're so sneaky and good at what they do that I'm really into Mount Lions. And learning that whole thing about how they kill stuff where they bite through their vertebrae, like wedge their teeth into the vertebrae and then split it. It's pretty cool. There's not much cooler than that. Yeah, that's a cool way to kill prey. Yeah.

Yeah, I definitely like them a lot. As far as cats go, it'd probably be like third for me. Jaguar, tiger, then mountain line. Okay. Probably like 15 overall of all the animals. So you like, this is your lowest of all the animals. Yeah, I like Great White's better. Okay.

But as far as what I've seen, this is, I mean, I get more excited for bears, I think, but this is about as excited as I get when I see an animal in the wild. Yeah, I feel like we find bears pretty regularly, and mountain lions is much more. I'd rather see a mountain lion than a black bear. I'll put them. I'll put them. I like both bear species we've talked about more than Mount lions,

but as far as getting excited when I see one, mountain lions are really up there for me. I don't think I really like this one. Granted, I haven't seen one in the wild, but looking at pictures of them on the internet, it's kind of like, they're kind of like the plain yogurt of cats to me. There's like no cool stripes, there's no main, there's no spots. They're just kind of boring to me. Okay.

But again, this is coming from a place of total environmental ignorance. And you think bobcats are cuter. Well, they have a cool little tail. At least there's some kind of distinguishing. Like an hour ago. you thought they were the exact same animal. I've had a long time to think, though. You know what? That's why we had this category, Mike.

And it's mostly to figure out whether or not you like them. It's where I'll see. Yes. Yeah. I, you know, we all live in the West. We all live in the Rockies. And having a big cat that lives in the same environment as us is so cool. And, you know, the fact that you expect to see deer,

you expect to see a lot of animals when you go out in the woods. Whenever you see a mountain lion is kind of what Jeff said, when we saw that first one, it's like you realize there's a lion out here with us. There's a really big cat that's super quiet and such a stealthy hunter. And I think just because they're where we live, I've developed this love for them.

But I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to swing you. It's fine. No, I think it really does come down to just, I need to have that experience. Yeah, you need the exposure. Yeah. Well, you know, I don't even like Puma shoes. Hot take, I think they're kind of ugly.

Yeah. Well, you know, I think you need to go have that experience, but you also don't necessarily need to have it because Shannon Parker had a really bad mountain line experience. And sometimes they're better to avoid. So yeah, I think that's it for mountain lions. So don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. We hope you guys are liking the podcast so far.

We're having a lot of fun doing it. If you guys have any questions or anything, feel free to follow us on Instagram at Tooth and Claw Podcast. Yeah, I guess we'll be. We'll talk to you guys later. All right. See you guys. See you.