Olympic National Park in Washington State, USA.Photo:Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty
Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty
According to anews releasefrom the National Park Service, the child and their mother were camping in the Heart O’ the Hills area at Lake Angeles when the cougar attacked.
Officials were notified of the incident at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, and the boy was hospitalized only for evaluation.
“Due to the extreme nature of this incident, we are closing the Lake Angeles area and several trails in the vicinity,” Olympic National Park Wildlife Biologist Tom Kay said, per the release. “Out of an abundance of caution, the Lake Angeles Trail, Heather Park Trail, Switchback Trail, and the entire Klahhane Ridge Trail are closed until further notice.”
Park officials and wildlife experts skilled at tracking cougars were dispatched “to the cougar’s last known point at Lake Angeles,” the park said in the release, adding that the animal “will be euthanized and removed from the park for a necropsy" if captured and killed.
The park noted that “cougars are rarely seen and attacks on humans are extraordinarily rare.”
“If you meet a cougar, it is important to not run because it could trigger the cougar’s attack instinct,” the park service explained. “People should group together, appear as large as possible, keep eyes on the animal, make lots of noise and shout loudly.”
Olympic National Park Entry Sign.Getty
Getty
AsPEOPLEpreviously reported, a jogger from Asheville, North Carolina, also escaped a terrifying encounter — this time, with a mother bear — on July 7, according to multiple news outlets.
Bill Palas — a longtime resident of Asheville — was running the trails of Pisgah National Forest when he turned a corner and saw a cub,ABC 11reported.
“When you see a cub like that, there’s usually a mom around," he recalled, per the outlet. “So, I go and I turn around real quick — and all of a sudden, there I see the momma bear.”
The outlet reported that Palas started to yell and wave his hands as the mother bear chased the cub up the hill.
“After that initial encounter where she raked her claws against my face, and my arm went in her mouth, what went through my mind was, ‘This is it, the battle was going to go on,'” Palas toldWCCB News.
“She stands up on her back legs, and here’s this head — her head must have been the size of a basketball — and it’s right here,” Palas described, per ABC 11.
“We started swimming across the shore, maybe like 30 yards from the shoreline. That’s when I felt like something grabbed me on my thigh,” the 47-year-old told PEOPLE. “I just screamed to my friends, ‘Something is biting me!’ And I felt like it was holding onto me for some time.”
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“I couldn’t touch the ground so I was still swimming with my right arm and I used my left hand to take it off me,” Emag recalled, noting that she struggled to unclench theshark’s jaw. “I’m not sure exactly if I went inside the shark’s mouth or not but I had some small cuts on my hand too. I didn’t even see it coming.”
source: people.com
