Replying to Yesterday A Mountain Lion Stalked Me
Last night I was out for my nightly walk (it's usually a lonely one). At one point I was passed by a jogger. about two minutes later the jogger came sprinting back the other way, stopped in front of me and motioned for me to take off my headphones, so I did. He looks back and points behind him, says "There's a cougar back there!"
"A cougar?"
"Just off the path." He's pointing, and I notice something in the bushes moving toward us at a slight angle.
Jogger dude says "I'm going this way, and books it away while looking back at me, waving for me to follow. So I start walking away pretty fucking fast, but I don't run or jog because I figure if this cougar wants me then I'm going to need the energy. So I'm walking, and i can hear it walking through the bushes just behind and to the side of me, and i can tell it's a big motherfucker too because all the bushes around it are moving pretty crazy.
I round a corner and the jogger dude is there waiting for me (nice dude). He nods at me and then keeps jogging away, I'm still saving my energy just in case. Keep in mind it's night and kind of hard to see anything clearly, but we could both hear that cat coming pretty well.
Anyways, every time I come around a corner the jogger is waiting there for me, and then he keeps running. At one point I thought about waiting at one of the intersections in the woods to warn people about it, so I stopped, but then I looked back and actually saw the fucking thing probably about 40 feet away, walking towards me through the long grass, so I walk out of the forest as fast as I can.
As soon as I got out of there, jogger dude is waiting for me and I see him pull out his cellphone, and he starts calling the police or animal services or whoever. I keep looking behind me to see if the cat is coming out of the woods but I don't see it anywhere so I figure it must have decided to stay in there.
I head home and jogger dude heads whatever way he was going, probably home as well.
Overall, I'd say it was a pretty frightening experience, especially after it decided that making itself obviously visible to me wasn't such a bad idea. It's kinda funny though because just last week I had been complaining to my mum about how I never see any cougars in the neighborhood, even though the brochure we were given before we moved in said cougars were spotted occasionally (they usually only come this far when they can't get food elsewhere). 6 years of living here and I finally get to see my first cougar (the animal kind, anyways), and the thing is fucking following me for a couple of minutes.
Yeah, cool story hansel, I know. Anybody got any similar run-ins with dangerous animals? Post up your stories here if you do.
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