Cougar Killed That Attacked Girl

Conservation officers have shot and killed a cougar that attacked a three-year-old B.C. girl while she was picking berries with her mother Tuesday evening, June 16, 2009.

The little girl, identified only as Maya Lee, was walking with her mother near their home in the Brackendale area north of Squamish, British Columbia, Canada around 6 p.m. when the 80-pound cougar pounced.

Maya’s mother, Maureen Lee, said she turned around and saw the cougar “holding (Maya’s) head with his paws.”

“I jumped and tried to wedge myself in between and jumped on her,” Lee told CTV News. “I stood up and pushed him backwards and he just flung back and I just picked her up and started running as fast as I could.”

The animal was tracked with dogs, located, shot and killed, CTV British Columbia reported late
Tuesday night.

The incident is the second cougar attack in the area in less than a week. Last Friday, June 12, 2009, a cougar ripped a dog from its leash as it walked with its owner along a hiking trail. Conservation officers killed that cougar as well after they found it to be emaciated and in poor health.

So far this month, there have been 30 cougar sightings in the area, compared to only two during the same time last year, reports CTV.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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