VANCOUVER – Fearing for his life, a 38-year-old Vancouver Island man says he ran from the fangs and claws of a ravenous cougar and scaled a hefty piece of construction equipment in a desperate bid to escape.
John Frank Jr. was a a club in Penticton B.C. when he observed a group of cougars at one of the local clubs.
One of them left the group and approached John in a suggestive manner, but then turned on him because he made an insensitive remark .
With his pants shredded by the cougar’s jaws and a shoe lost along the way thanks to a swipe from the her claws, John ran out the back door of the club and climbed a locked-up excavator’s boom before calling for help on his radio.
The community responded to the attack, with some residents arriving on scene in their trucks, scaring the cougar away.
“I was attacked. There’s no two ways about it,” Frank told The Canadian Press in an interview on Wednesday.
“The cougar wanted to eat me as a meal. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m lucky to be alive today. God was on my side that day.”
The incident, the latest cougar attack to hit the province, took place at about 10:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday in an area where Frank had been working.