Cougar Attack in Burns Lake Area Leaves Boy With Stitches
By 250 News
Sunday, January 03, 2010 07:13 PM
Prince George, B.C.- The cougar attack in Boston Bar today (see Dog Saves Boy from Cougar) was not the only cougar attack in the province this week.
Conservation Officer Gary Van Spangen says around 11 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, an 8 year old boy was tobogganing with his sister in the small community of Danskin near Francois Lake south of Burns Lake. The boy was attacked by a cougar “The little girl started screaming which alerted their mom who was nearby. The mother flicked a towel at the Cougar, hitting it on the head. That was enough for the cat to release it’s grip on the boy and flee the scene.”
The boy was taken to Burns Lake hospital where several staples had to be put in place to close the wound on his scalp. He was released from hospital later that day.
Conservation officers from Burns Lake attended the scene that afternoon and tracked the cat. “They did see the cat” says Van Spangen “but weren’t able to deal with it because it was getting too dark.”
The search resumed the next day “We made arrangements to get a cougar hound handler in with his dogs the next morning. At daylight, Conservation Officers and the cougar hound handler attended in Danskin to try and track the cougar. At about 12:30 they did locate the cougar, and it was with another cougar.” Van Spangen says both cats were female, one looked like a sub-adult, probably the offspring of the larger of the two cats. Van Spangen says both cats were destroyed “Since it had attacked a child, we can’t take any chances that it wouldn’t attack again so we had to err on the side of caution and both animals were destroyed.”
Van Spangen says both animals appeared to be healthy, but necropsies will be conducted to see if there were any underlying issues that might have sparked this attack. He says it’s difficult to say what might have triggered this attack “We do, unfortunately, sometimes have these incidents happen in British Columbia, but they are extremely rare. Most of the time we don’t have any issues with cougars. Most of the time it’s a sighting and that’s it.”
Van Spangen says the Conservation Office likes to keep track of the cougar population, and if people spot a cougar, they want to know about it “We may not go out because it’s not unusual to see a cougar in rural or semi rural areas of Prince George, we do have a healthy population of cougars in and around Prince George and Burns Lake. But if you do see a cougar, give the Conservation Office a call at 1-877-952-7277.”
If confronted by a cougar, he says you should make yourself look as big as possible, scream and yell at it, grab a stick and pound it against trees or against the ground “You want to let the cougar know you are not easy prey, and make sure you back away from the area. Never turn your back on a cougar.”
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Posted by: MrPG on January 3 2010 10:47 PM
Since when have cougars been moving into the Prince George - Burns Lake area?
We lived at Southbank (Francois Lake) for some years and never saw or heard of cougars in that region. They have migrated a long, long way ... don't you think?
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