Woman saves husband from mountain lion in California park By Lisa Leff ASSOCIATED PRESS SAN FRANCISCO - Wildlife officials yesterday credited a woman with saving her husband's life by clubbing a mountain lion that attacked him while the couple were hiking in a California state park. Jim and Nell Hamm, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next month, were in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park when the cougar pounced. "He didn't scream. It was a different, horrible plea for help, and I turned around, and by then the cat had wrestled Jim to the ground," Hamm said in an interview from the hospital. Her husband was in fair condition and recovering from a torn scalp, puncture wounds and other injuries. After the attack, game wardens closed the park 320 miles north of San Francisco and released hounds to track the cat. Wardens later shot and killed a pair of mountain lions found near the trail where the attack happened. The carcasses were flown to a state forensics lab to determine whether either animal had mauled the man. Hamm, 65, said she grabbed a 4-inch-thick log and beat the animal with it, but it wouldn't let go of her husband's head. "Jim was talking to me all through this, and he said, 'I've got a pen in my pocket and get the pen and jab him in the eye,'" she said. "So I got the pen and tried to put it in his eye, but it didn't want to go in as easy as I thought it would." When the pen bent and became useless, she went back to using the log. The cougar eventually let go, and with blood on its snout, it stood staring at her. She screamed and waved the log until the animal walked away. "She saved his life, there is no doubt about it," said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the Department of Fish and Game. The couple walked a quarter-mile to a trailhead, where she gathered branches to protect them if more cougars came around. They waited until a ranger came by. http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/nation/16549666.htm
What a fiasco. A 65 year old woman waving a log over her head furiously and screaming. Haha...that's just too funny.
On a side note, the lady married her husband when she was only 15 years old (a minor) and he was 20. The law sure was different in the old days.
Excellent story. Happy to hear she saved her husband. One question though, why do people go out into the middle of the wilderness where wild animals live and just "camp" there? Is it the thrill? Do they not think they may be killed by an animal? I certainly don't understand it.
Why didn't the dude just rip the mountain lion's tongue out? http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=97975
The animal didn't come at them while they were in camp, but while hiking. Most of the time there isn't a problem with animals and humans. I go camping and hiking fairly frequently and I have seen animals, and even had some in the camp(thanks to other idiotic campers nearby) but it has never been a problem. I don't know why everyone goes into the wilderness. I do it because I love nature, and enjoy spending time surrounded by it. Food cooked over a campfire is also the best meals I eat in the course of a year. It is better than any fancy restaurant food, or thanksgiving. The stuff just tastes great.
What does this have to do with being a chauvinist? He was obviously telling her what to do, and like a good woman, she did her job: (for those of you who don't read sarcastic wit well)
The woman was jabbing a pen into the mountain lion's eye until the pen actually bent beyond usefulness. She's a baddass.
WHy "For Your Male Chauvinists"???? Do you mean to say that we MCs wouldn't like to have a wife or girlfriend like that...? Oh, heck yeah... I'd like to... then she'd go back to the kitchen... where she belongs... EDIT: LOL Xerobull
Old ladies often kick ass. I saw an interwiew with an old couple where the man was attacked by a bear. The bear actually had his torso in its mouth (he showed the scars in the shape of a bear mouth) and the old lady took her binoculars swung them around by the strap and beat the bear on the nose (because she had the presence of mind to remember that a bear's nose is very sensitive) until the bear released her husband and ran away. BAD ASS!
Holy freakin' crap! What a woman! As people move into mountain lion habitat, and the cougars aren't being hunted, these instances are going to happen. In Texas, where you can hunt a puma (yes, they're all the same thing... I'm just having fun), the cats are very cautious around humans. They aren't stupid, and see them as threats. When was the last time a person was attacked by a cougar in Texas? I'm not surprised at all that this happened in California.
