Cougar kills 1 mt biker in WA, injures another

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romann
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Cougar kills 1 mt biker in WA, injures another

Post by romann » May 19th, 2018, 11:41 pm

Heard this on the radio, didn't believe at first so looked it up.

They say bikers noticed cougar chasing them, stopped and stood their ground. Cougar attacked one of the bikers even though he was doing all the right things. Then it attacked (fatally) another biker who ran.
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/crews- ... /752771730
Emergency crews responded around 11:20 a.m. Saturday to a mountain lion attack in foothills near North Bend.

Two mountain bikers were attacked. One was killed.

This is the first time a cougar has killed anyone in Washington State for nearly 100 years.

The injured biker, 31, was taken to Harborview for treatment of serious injuries. Hospital officials said Saturday afternoon he was awake and alert and is in satisfactory condition.
The article also has a link to "cougar incident" map for WA, where you can click on each incident and see what it was. Most are just reported sightings (one local sighting that doesn't appear on the map was cougar in Salmon Creek park last spring/early summer). One "incident" on the map was just east of downtown Vancouver, it was cougar approaching workers at night - they made noise and scared it away.

Steve20050
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Re: Cougar kills 1 mt biker in WA, injures another

Post by Steve20050 » May 20th, 2018, 1:31 pm

It will be interesting to see what they determined the cause of the cougar attack was. Is there any autopsy preformed? Obviously we know what killed the cougar, just would like to see if there was an underlying reason for the attack. These type attacks are so infrequent with humans. One can hope common sense prevails and those powers that be understand this is extremely rare.

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drm
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Re: Cougar kills 1 mt biker in WA, injures another

Post by drm » May 20th, 2018, 1:57 pm

They initially did what they are supposed to, but then one of them ran, which he isn't supposed.

I saw a different article which said they would be examining the cougar to try and figure out why it was so aggressive.

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retired jerry
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Re: Cougar kills 1 mt biker in WA, injures another

Post by retired jerry » May 20th, 2018, 2:26 pm

sometimes at the beginning of the season they're starving

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Re: Cougar kills 1 mt biker in WA, injures another

Post by Aimless » May 20th, 2018, 8:45 pm

My understanding is that mtn bikers are attacked more often than hikers because a mtn biker more closely resembles a fleeing deer and is more likely to activate a cougar's instinct to attack. The fact that the bikers stopped and attempted to stand ground and scare it away tends to undermine this explanation, but the initial chasing after them may have been triggered in that way and by the time they stopped, they were already established in the cougar's mind as potential prey.

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Guy
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Re: Cougar kills 1 mt biker in WA, injures another

Post by Guy » May 21st, 2018, 5:28 am

drm wrote:
May 20th, 2018, 1:57 pm
They initially did what they are supposed to, but then one of them ran, which he isn't supposed.

I saw a different article which said they would be examining the cougar to try and figure out why it was so aggressive.
True but I heard on another news story that the survivor was attacked while they were standing still then the other guy took off and thats when the cougar changed his attack to the other cyclist. Granted we are all dealing with what the media reports so stories can be hopelessly conflicting sometimes.
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drm
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Re: Cougar kills 1 mt biker in WA, injures another

Post by drm » June 15th, 2018, 3:19 pm

Indeed as Jerry suggested it was determined that the cougar was "emaciated" so this was a very hungry kitty, desperately hungry apparently.

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