VERY STUPID:

Deer Draw Cougars Ever Eastward (BLAINE HARDEN, November 12, 2002, NY Times)

When Greg McCoy found Oreo, his daughter's house cat, in the jaws of a mountain lion early this year, he grabbed the big cat by the tail with both hands, dragged it onto his front lawn and jumped on top of it.

With his left arm, he tried to hold the writhing lion in a headlock. With his right hand, he attempted to yank Oreo from the lion's mouth.

As Mr. McCoy, 37, and 215 pounds, tugged on the bloodied house cat, the lion--an adult female weighing perhaps 100 pounds--struggled out of his headlock. Before it ran off to eat Oreo, it swatted Mr. McCoy across the face with a rear paw.

"It felt like a fist with four nails in it and it brought me to my senses and I decided I better let go," said Mr. McCoy, a founder of a small company that offers wireless broadband Internet access to people who live, as he does, in the mountains on the outskirts of Boulder. "I had read about how to deal with a mountain lion, but none of that entered my head when I saw one with my daughter's cat. I was plain mad stupid."

That Oreo must have been one heck of a pet. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 12, 2002 10:36 AM