Cougar attacks toddler
Bree Nielsen and her Dad Travis and Mom Andrea were in their backyard in Tahsis on Vancouver Island’s west coast on Monday, Sept. 22 playing with their puppy. Bree was over near their shed when suddenly, literally out of the blue, things went sideways.
“(Bree) was sitting with a six-week-old puppy and we were just kind of looking at the ocean and enjoying the day,” Andrea Nielson told the Canadian Press. “And then all of a sudden from behind the shed, my daughter was attacked.”
“At first, we thought it was a large dog,” she added. “But then we realized — after my husband pulled my daughter out of the way and punched it in the face — that it was actually a cougar.”
Dad chases cougar off
Punching the cougar in the choppers caused it to release Bree and she was scooped up and taken into the house. Mom said that while her daughter was crying she was mostly okay.
“She’s got some small puncture wounds just above her right ear,” Mom said. “And one on her back and then a couple on her chest.”
Travis Nielson wasn’t satisfied with a punch and the freeing of his daughter, no he wanted to make sure the cougar was gone. He chased it out of the yard and bravely kept going after it right into the forest. His wife and Bree were safe in the home but Travis continued to run at the cougar and yell at it to get lost.
And that’s what it did, finally.
The story has a mostly happy ending as Bree is okay and her father, despite taking on the cougar and chasing the deadly beast into the woods, avoided being attacked. But for the cougar the ending wasn’t good: Conservation officers tracked it down with bloodhounds and shot it dead.
In the end, Andrea Nielson said it was a rather “intense day.”
